


Le Joe

by VictoriaSkyeMarsters



Category: Beyond the Gates, Casino Royale (2006), Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Extended Universe - Fandom
Genre: Anal Sex, Comfort, Eventual Smut, Hannibal Extended Universe, Kissing, M/M, Oral Sex, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sexual Tension, Sexy Time, Slow Burn, They're both nerds, bumbling british teacher and his albanian banker, but not as big a nerd as me for writing this, crazy hodgepodge hannigram au, graphic scenes of violence based on true events, lots of Hugh's character naked, not hannibal, slight sugar daddy thing happening, some blood, then that stops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-05-31 12:14:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 50,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6469684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VictoriaSkyeMarsters/pseuds/VictoriaSkyeMarsters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Joe leaves The Ecole Technique Officielle, his UN transport is waylaid by a mysterious man dressed all in black.</p><p>                                                                                      ***</p><p>“Mr. Connor,” the man said as he released his hold from Joe’s waist and took a step back. “I’m Le Chiffre,” he said with an extended hand. Joe took it; he did not grasp it and shake it properly, but took it and held it, like a lifeline. The smile disappeared from Le Chiffre’s face then, and he covered his other hand over Joe’s. He pierced him through with those odd eyes, intensely serious. “Would you like to be my hostage, Mr. Connor?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I realized I needed some Le Chiffre in my life, and I needed him with sweet Joe from Beyond the Gates (aka Shooting Dogs). It was going to be a one-shot, but these two weren't having it. So here we are. I hope you enjoy, darlings. <3

‘We’re all just selfish pieces of work in the end.’

Joe Connor sat in the back of the white canvassed UN transport van, head bowed, sweat-matted strands hanging over bloodshot eyes. It was hot, but he shivered, an incessant tremble he could feel in his bones. In front of him, across the span of the truck bed, sat a uniformed man with a gun. To his right, open air, a dusty road, and a deceivingly blue sky. He could not abide it, and so he shut his eyes, and as the van rumbled over the hilly terrain, he let himself be lightly jostled on the wooden crate where he perched. 

Behind his eyelids, he saw it all again, dream-like and smeared, flashes of red and gleams of a machete’s blade in the cruelly bright sun. His tongue parted his lips; they were dry, he had been biting them. Resting on his knee, his hand was shaking. Joe did not want the uniformed men to see, so he brought both hands to pull through his hair and rake the chestnut curls from his brow. He took a deep breath, and released it with a little sound, like a moan, and he cut his eyes at the men in the van to see if anyone had heard, if anyone had noticed. No one was watching him or listening to him. They all sat in silence, gripping their rifles, adjusting their berets, wiping sweat from their foreheads. None took notice of Joe Connor, the young teacher near to tears. They were fleeing The Ecole Technique Officielle, all of them, and held thoughts only of themselves. Thinking of those left behind the gate would do no good; no thoughts of regret would spare anyone’s life. No well-wishes or prayers would stay the keen edge of a knife. When they had entered the UN vehicle, they had left the others to die. 

Joe had entered the vehicle, and though his tears fell like hot betrayal on his cheeks, he had stayed put and allowed himself to be carried away to safety. He tried to keep his thoughts away from them, away from the sad, staring faces. He tried not to think of how many of those faces belonged to the bodies of the dead now, while he perched on his crate and let the uneven road rattle his body, so alive was he, so alive and capable of feeling the bumps and the breeze. He imagined he could smell it on the warm, April wind. Death. But it might have been fear he scented mixed with a sweet fragrance, like orange blossoms. His own fear still poured from his pores, the sweat of survival. 

‘We’re all just selfish pieces of work in the end,’ he heard her voice ringing in his skull. She had certainly been right, about him anyway. In the end, he had been selfish. And afraid. And now he was selfish and afraid, but he was alive. The man across from him cleared his throat and spit out the open end of the truck. Joe watched the glob arch through the air and fall with a splat in the dirt. He directed his wide blue eyes to the spitter, and did not turn away when his gaze was met. A moment passed between the two men, the soldier and the teacher, the spitter and the shaker, and then the van rolled over a rock, and both took the opportunity to look away. 

Joe looked back out to the road falling out behind the UN’s tires, and he spied the freshly pressed rock. He squinted, because it looked strangely pointed for a rock, and when the van began to spin out of control, he knew it had not been a rock at all, but a spike in the road, a carefully positioned hindrance. Joe clutched the wooden crate beneath him and braced as the van skidded off the road to finally come to an arresting halt in a strip of tall grass. The other men in the back of the van with Joe, uniformed and armed all, wasted no time in filing out from the covered back, guns at the ready, attention all around. They looked back down the road where they had come from, and forward to where they’d been headed. They poked at the tall grass with their weapons and spoke amongst themselves. The other vans in their caravan had not seen, and they did not stop to help. Joe thought, as he sat on his crate, that maybe they had seen and pretended not to. It would be, after all, the order of the day. 

He licked his lips and wiped the stinging sweat from his eyes, and then he crossed his arms over his chest and settled back against the canvassed wall. Joe had no desire to leave the van. If the spike had been left in the road, that meant trouble. He was a teacher, and he was shaking and scared, and he would be useless if there was trouble. He had proven that enough. Now he would sit and reap the benefit of his cowardice, and let others risk themselves in his stead. Perhaps that was his true calling, Joe thought bitterly, not to make a difference, but to watch from the safety of shadows as others did. Only when he tasted copper on his tongue did he realize he’d bitten his lip in his ferocious self-hatred. He brought up the sleeve of his dark blue button up and patted his bottom lip. A blossom of scarlet soaked his cuff, so dark against the material it looked almost like a spill of ink. Maybe it would pass for that one day, when he was back in England with his books and pens and safe studies. But no. Joe knew he would burn the clothes on his back when he had the chance. He tongued at the cut on his lip, and tasted the swell of blood. Poor Joe, with his bleeding lip and trembles and shame, he did not hear the footsteps as they approached the back of the van. He did not see the man until he was a hairsbreadth away, and then it was too late. Not that Joe would have done anything other than remain on his crate. 

“Hello,” the man said, and Joe regarded him with huge, teary eyes. He was tall, handsome, immaculate, and certainly did not belong on the side of a road in Rwanda in the middle of a genocide, dressed as he was in an expensive-looking black suit, double breasted. His hair was dark and finely slicked, barely long enough to sweep behind smallish ears and frame sharp, elegant cheekbones. His eyes sat beneath a heavily sculpted brow, and shadows filled the creases of his eyelids despite the high sun. One eye, Joe discovered in his speculative staring, was cloudy, and he wondered if he was blind out of it. Thin scars peppered the corners of that murky eye, the left, but the strangeness only amplified the beauty of the right, irises like deep, rich honey. His pupils were mere pinpricks in the light, but they grew large as he ducked his head closer and leaned into the shade, sitting next to Joe on the truck bed. He crossed his legs, and Joe looked at his socks, black, maybe silk, and the sliver of skin that slipped to exposure, a slightly tanned creeping of flesh between the top of his sock and the bottom of his tailored trousers. Beside him, wavering on his crate, Joe became aware he had not showered in days, had sweated profusely, was sweating profusely right at that moment, and wore dirty, bloody clothes. But he smiled at the man in black who had arrived mysteriously to sit beside him, a strained, painful smile, because that was the polite thing to do. Joe was selfish and a coward, maybe, but he was polite. 

“Hello,” Joe said, and he was shocked by the weak mew of his voice. He was used to its playful, quipping, British cadence as he spun stories for the schoolchildren and commentated recess games. He was used to speaking with gentle command and friendly authority at the front of his classroom, filled to the brim with eager students hanging to his every word as he taught them geography, history, religion. The voice he spoke with now to greet the stranger was the voice of a broken man, and he looked down at his hands, still shaking. He clasped them together and hoped the show of weakness would go unnoticed. A ridiculous thought, for Joe felt like weakness personified, a fleshy, sinewy lump of all things faulted and failed. 

The man in the black suit turned to Joe like a praying mantis, head held tilted on his neck with precision and grace, and the very thought of his gaze forced Joe’s eyes back up from his lap, and they looked at one another for a long moment of silence that stretched, for Joe, into a million moments. The man did not frown, but he did not smile. His lips, a perfect cupid’s bow, fixed into what Joe perceived as a pout, and his eyebrows, strangely pale, twitched towards one another as though they wished to furrow together in a scowl, but he did not scowl, his brow only twitched, and then he held two fingers up to his temple. Joe followed the movement of his fingers. They were long, and the nails were pristinely clean. Joe was afraid to look under his nails, so he watched the man instead, as he massaged fingertips into his temple. 

The teacher, innately inquisitive, nearly asked about the man’s health. Did he have a headache? Was he feeling alright? But he stopped himself, because those questions were rapidly replaced with others once the immediacy of the stranger’s peculiar handsomeness was cast aside. Questions like, where were the UN guards? Joe strained his ears, large things he kept hidden beneath his mop of curls, but he heard no Belgian exchanges. In his first purposeful movement since he’d sat himself down on his crate, Joe stood. He craned his neck to peer around the side of the canvas back, and his shaky limbs toppled him. Joe fell. He would have fallen face-first onto the road, but he was caught by the man in the black suit, who had stood with catlike instinct and grabbed Joe’s middle before he could make a complete fool of himself. Now he knelt on the bed of the van with the stranger’s arms wrapped firmly around his waist, and he only felt half a fool. 

“You’re unwell,” the man said. Their faces were very close. Joe heard an accent he had been too startled to hear before. Albanian, he wondered, and then he felt the tickle of the man’s breath against his cheek and ceased wondering anything. Joe was an empty, thoughtless shell, and the arms wrapped strongly around him were all that existed.

He strung together a response out of politeness instead of cognitive brain function. “I’m fine. Thank you.” 

The man’s face twitched again, tiny micro-expressions competing to conquer the serene palette Joe could not tear his eyes from. “You are not UN,” he said, and though it was not shaped as a question, Joe found himself shaking his head regardless. 

“I’m a teacher,” Joe offered when the silence had stretched thin, and he felt like the man needed to hear more. His response brought the first smile, albeit small, to the man’s face, and the teacher was mesmerized anew. He wanted the man to keep smiling, and so he added, “Joe Connor.”

The man’s smile deepened, and Joe watched the creases that grew in the corner of his eyes and around his mouth. It seemed to smooth some of his sharp edges when he smiled, and Joe felt himself slightly soothed.

“Mr. Connor,” the man said as he released his hold from Joe’s waist and took a step back. “I’m Le Chiffre,” he said with an extended hand. Joe took it; he did not grasp it and shake it properly, but took it and held it, like a lifeline. The smile disappeared from Le Chiffre’s face then and he covered his other hand over Joe’s. He pierced him through with those odd eyes, intensely serious. “Would you like to be my hostage, Mr. Connor?” he asked. 

Joe stared at him. He licked his lips to test for blood (it had stopped bleeding) and let his eyes dart from Le Chiffre’s face to the hazy space behind him. The UN soldiers were being hauled into the back of a different vehicle, a long, black van. Joe wondered vaguely when they had been rendered weaponless. How long had he been sitting on his wood crate, and in such a daze that he heard nothing that went on around him? 

“You are in shock, Mr. Connor,” Le Chiffre said as though he’d read the thoughts swirling, sludge-like, through the young teacher’s head. “I watched you for five minutes before I approached you.”

Joe nodded that he understood. Somewhere in his mind he deemed it appropriate that he should be in shock, it was quite sensible really, but through the muck, a word struck him hard, and he repeated it absently. “Hostage?” The man called Le Chiffre was still holding his hand, or rather, he was letting Joe hold his, and Joe kept it gripped with all his remaining strength. 

“My men are taking your men from the UN hostage,” Le Chiffre explained slowly, his accent wrapping around each word like velvet. “You say you are not UN, and I’m inclined to believe you,” he continued, and Joe wanted to close his eyes and listen, listen to the lilting, deep voice forever, but he kept his eyes on Le Chiffre’s, politely. “I do not wish to take a schoolteacher against his will, nor do I wish to leave you here.” His voice grew softer, lighter. “Did you see the bodies as you travelled this road, Mr. Connor?” Joe nodded, and so did Le Chiffre. He squeezed Joe’s hand. “I would not leave you here to become one of them. I would prefer you come with me instead. But it is your choice.”

“You want me to come with you?” Joe asked. “As your hostage?” 

“I do want that, yes,” Le Chiffre said. Joe looked past him, at the last of the uniformed men being herded into the back of the black van. The door slammed shut behind him, and the noise made Joe jump. He wanted to be away from Rwanda, desperately, away from gunfire and bodies in the road. He wanted to close his eyes and burn his clothes and forget. 

“Okay,” Joe said, and he let Le Chiffre hold him steady as he pushed himself off the UN van. Their hands no longer touched, but Le Chiffre kept his palm square and large on the back of Joe’s back. Joe knew it must be wet with sweat, and he felt a blush of embarrassment, but the other man did not mind, not at all, and he kept his hand there as he led Joe to the black van. Joe waited for the doors to be opened so he could sit in the back with the others, and he was surprised when Le Chiffre guided him to the front, and then past it completely to a second vehicle, a smaller black van. He opened the passenger seat for Joe and waved his hand insistently. Joe followed his direction and slid into the leather seat. He watched the strange man walk in front of the van to the driver’s side, with his entirely black suit and strange eyes, and Joe thought he had never seen anything so captivating. It was his shock, he knew, skewing his perception, but he didn’t care. When Le Chiffre settled into the driver’s seat and spared Joe a small smile, the shocked, exhausted, selfish, scared teacher buckled his seat belt. And smiled back. 

 

The cipher. The figure. 

Joe sipped the water he had been handed, and the ice clicked pleasantly against the glass. He remembered his French, and he knew what Le Chiffre meant, and he looked at him now, seated across from him, and wished he knew his real name. 

“You’re dehydrated,” Le Chiffre said from his place amongst the downy cushions. The two men occupied a bedroom, spacious, and Joe sat on the bed of purple sheets while Le Chiffre reclined in a soft, overstuffed armchair. They both held tall glasses of ice water. The condensation dampened Joe’s fingers, and helped cool his fevered skin. He took another greedy sip of the water, and Le Chiffre looked on approvingly. “You haven’t inquired after your UN friends,” he said then, and Joe raised his dark eyebrows in question before his addled brain caught up, and they settled again in comprehension. 

“They aren’t my friends,” Joe said. His voice had regained some of its former strength with the help of water and time, but it nearly broke when he spoke, his words close to stumbling as he thought of the genuine friends, the friends he had left behind. They would be dead now. A busted breath escaped his lips, scabbed over from his worried chewing, and he watched the ice floating in Le Chiffre’s glass, bobbing and clinking as he raised it to his own lips, soft and unblemished, for a drink. His throat worked hypnotically as he swallowed it down, and Joe watched that too, the bobbing of Le Chiffre’s Adam’s apple. 

It was the same day, only a few hours later, when the black vans had pulled up to park over an expansive lawn of well-maintained green grass, and Le Chiffre had walked around to Joe’s side and opened the door for him. He’d held out his hand, Joe had taken it mutely, and they had walked ahead of the others into the richly looming three story house. Mansion, Joe supposed it was. He let himself be led by the hand up the winding staircases, into a lushly decorated bedroom at the end of a hall, his feet stepping soundlessly over the oriental floor runner. And he sat in that bedroom currently, propped up on the bed, legs crossed Indian style, staring at the man in the chair. Le Chiffre was better suited amidst the luxuriant, feathered cushions than he had been against the stark African landscape, and his tie, black, was loosened now around his neck, and the first button of his shirt, also black, was undone, exposing the beginning tufts of chest hair. Joe brought a hand absently to his own chest, to feel through the dark fabric of his shirt at the smoothness beneath. He swallowed hard, and took another thirsty gulp from his glass, draining it to empty so only the cubes of ice remained when he set it down on the bedside table. 

Le Chiffre finished his water, as well, and placed it on the coaster awaiting it on a coffee table, fancily carved and ivory white, before settling back into the chair comfortably, elbow balanced on the armrest, two fingers brought up to rest against his left temple. “You have no love for those with whom you traveled?” Le Chiffre asked. In his discarded drinking glass, the ice melted and shifted noisily. On the bed, Joe fidgeted his fingers, now empty and free from his own glass. He should have held onto it, he lamented, just to have something to hold, to steady his hands, but he had cast it aside, and so his fingers were left to fidget aimlessly, twining together, untwining, finding their way through tangled curls. All the while, Joe considered the question put upon him by the other man. Had he love for those with whom he’d traveled? For the man with the gun who had spat into the road while Joe had shifted uneasily and moaned his heartbreak on heavy, guilt-riddled exhales? 

“I had love, but not for your UN captives,” Joe answered at long last, and Le Chiffre leaned forward in his chair, uncrossing his legs to rest his elbows on his knees.

“You speak as though your love is in the past,” he observed, eyes both amber and milky set upon Joe with rapt attention. “Did you have loved ones, Mr. Connor, in the facility you escaped?” A sickness rose in Joe’s throat, a bile that burned and nauseated, and he fought to swallow it as he nodded. Le Chiffre pressed further forward, fanning his palms in a lengthy spread over suited knees. “A girlfriend? Wife?” At this, Joe scoffed, and Le Chiffre amended, “A lover, then.” 

“I was to be there for a year, as a teacher of many subjects,” Joe said when the threat of acidic upheaval had receded back down his throat. “I had love for my students, and love for my own teacher.” His mind flashed with afterimages: Christopher handing him his bible, a sweet smile on his handsome yet weathered face, Marie running towards him, laughing as he clapped his hands and spurred her on with his overly loud, sportscaster voice. He saw himself falling to his knees with the students, in playful praise, and then he saw himself pushed to his knees, a gun waving in front of his face. “I use past tense, because they are in the past now.” 

Le Chiffre understood, and he lifted his chin in an attractive half-nod. “A nasty business, this coup,” he said, and Joe could only stare in response. Yes, he thought. Nasty, indeed. “I am here myself on a business trip. A happy accident and unsavory inconvenience, both.” When Joe’s eyes glazed with apprehension, Le Chiffre waved his hand in a dismissal, as if to shoo away the teacher’s doubts. “An inconvenience to be here during the unanticipated beginnings of violence, but a happy accident, as well, for my employers. And for me, I think, Mr. Connor.”

“What exactly is your business, Le Chiffre?” he asked, and the name tasted sweet on his tongue, foreign and intriguing, like the man it belonged to. “Were your UN hostages your business or your happy accident?” 

“My business is banking,” answered Le Chiffre, eyes smoldering in contrast with his cool demeanor. “The UN hostages are a happy accident for my employers.” His lips twitched at the edges, threatening a smile. “You are my happy accident.”

Joe flushed beneath the surprising declaration and ducked his head to let unruly hair sweep over his pupil-blown eyes. As quickly as nerves would allow, he hurried the conversation to a safer route. “Banking,” he said, and Le Chiffre, eyes alight with untold mischief, leaned back in his chair and returned his fingers to the hollow of his temple. Joe moved over the plush mattress, unfolding his legs from beneath him to sprawl in a stretch over Egyptian cotton covers. His muscles were sore, but he was no longer shaking, and he no longer felt an absence of control in his body and mind. “You are a banker who kidnaps members of the UN.” He did not phrase it as a question, and the banker rewarded the confidence with a smile.

“Only when the opportunity presents itself,” corrected Le Chiffre, accent twirling his words to dance circles around Joe’s tired head, “and my employers insisted on the seizure of this particular opportunity.”

“It’s not every day a convoy of UN guards moseys through a Rwandan genocide,” Joe said. 

“No, it’s not every day that happens,” Le Chiffre agreed. “I do prefer the business of banking to kidnapping, but I will admit it is not without its side benefits.” 

Joe knew his face was still flushed, but he forced his eyes up to meet Le Chiffre’s. “Such as?”

The banker made a face of mock contemplation, and then lifted his sleek shoulders in a light shrug. “All the new people one meets, perhaps.” He was fixated on Joe as he stood from his cozy chair and walked to the edge of the bed. Again, Joe’s head had lowered to examine his knees, and when cold fingers touched beneath his chin, he startled, but let his head be lifted. His blue eyes, dark and sad, fastened to Le Chiffre’s, warm and eerie. Joe’s sigh scattered from his lips, a delicate, winnowing thing that blew his hair from his eyes. “You would like to get clean,” he said, and again, it was not a question, and Joe tipped his head in acquiescence. He let himself lean easily into the fingers beneath his chin, and Le Chiffre swiftly retracted his touch and stepped away. “Follow me,” he said, and he waited for Joe to steady himself from the bed before he swept across the bedroom to open a solid oak door. “Through here,” he said, and Joe followed him into a mosaic-walled bathroom, nearly as large as the bedroom itself. 

Le Chiffre stood in the center of the room, and tapped his polished dress shoes thoughtfully against the rustic tile. “Shower or bath?” he asked, and Joe sucked his lower lip between his teeth and bit. He tasted the blood bloom on his tongue, his worried wound from before freshly opened. 

“Shower,” Joe decided. “I think I’m too filthy for a bath,” he added, and then he shuffled, head down, and wished he hadn’t. He felt embarrassed to be so unclean beside a man as up-kept as Le Chiffre. But Le Chiffre only moved to stand beside the walk-in, glass paneled shower and turned the nozzle. A cascade of even-pressured water flowed from the broad head, and Le Chiffre stepped to the side, to a cherry wood lacquered cabinet, which he opened to reveal a stack of fluffy white towels. He took one in his hands and walked it to Joe, who still stood in the doorway. Joe accepted it, clutching it to his chest, and allowed Le Chiffre to usher him fully into the bathroom and toward the shower, which was already steaming with promising, cleansing heat. 

“Alright?” Le Chiffre asked, and Joe raised his eyebrows. He was tempted, for an instant of time, to tell him the truth. No, not alright. He wasn’t alright, the world wasn’t alright, nothing had ever been alright, nor would it ever be. But the instant fell away into the past, like the faces of his dead friends, and he simply nodded. 

“Thanks,” Joe said, his voice almost lost beneath the pelting echo of the shower rain, but Le Chiffre heard him and turned to leave. At the doorway, however, he stopped and peered over his shoulder to steal a look at Joe who was preoccupied with the unbuttoning of his shirt. He waited for the teacher to feel eyes upon him and look up. When he did, Le Chiffre smiled kindly. 

“Let me know if you need anything, Mr. Connor,” he said. “I will be just outside.”

Joe fumbled with a button. “Yes, thanks. I’m fine,” he lied, and he smiled so the man would leave. When the door clicked softly shut, Joe sighed, an all-consuming release of exhaust, and returned to his buttons. His fatigued fingers worked at the worn fabric, and he peeled the deep blue, sweat stained shirt from his chest, wrested it over his shoulders, and let it fall in a crumple at his feet. He found the button of his pale blue jeans next and worked it free. The zipper followed, and he eased the light-wash denim over his narrow hips and down his thighs. They slipped easily the rest of the way down, settling around his ankles. He stepped free of them and slipped out of his boxer briefs, toeing them in the heap with his shirt and jeans. 

Joe was naked. When he passed the mirror, body-long with a gilded frame, he was glad for the steam that fogged his reflection. He had no desire to see himself; he knew what he would find in his eyes, and he feared it, so he hurried past the looking glass until he reached the shower door. He swung the towel Le Chiffre had handed him over the top, so that it hanged evenly on either side, and then he stepped into the dizzying steam and pounding heat. 

It felt good, selfishly satisfying, to stand beneath the spray, and Joe bent his head back with closed eyes and parted lips. The hot water stung where he’d bitten through the soft flesh, and he moaned at the clip of pain. Tears mingled with shower water down his cheeks, which he smoothed over with a hand, scraping with nails over the days' worth of light scruff along his jaw and smattered above the curve of his mouth. If he looked down, he knew he would see a brown spiral of grime as it dripped free of his body and disappeared into the abyss of the drain. He kept his eyes shut, head tilting to catch every angle of his face with the relentless spray. He turned, let the water soak his hair, and it grew blackish and streamed long over his brow and down his neck, curls straightening and that scent of fear running down the entirety of his body, vanishing between his feet with the grime and sweat and bits of blood.

And then he saw, in a sudden vision behind closed lids, Christopher’s face, vivid and real and insistent. Joe gasped and slammed his hands against the shower sides, one to the tile, and one to the glass door. The hand that met glass broke through, and he fell to the floor in a trembling heap as the glass shattered over him. His blood turned the tile beneath him red, and he held his gashed hand to his chest, and in his mind’s eye he still looked at the world-weary priest. Christopher reached for him, smiling sadly, and said, ‘Find fulfillment in everything, Joe.’ And then his eyes went wide with horror and Joe yelled and tried to shake the image from his head, but the shower beating down on him felt like the blood of his friend, and he could not vanquish the priest’s dead face from behind his eyes. 

Then Joe felt himself lifted, up and away from the gory rain, and he clutched madly to the one that held him tight. Against his bloody fingers he felt the smoothness of finely woven fabric, and he pressed his face against the dampened lapel of Le Chiffre’s suit jacket. 

Le Chiffre carried him swiftly from the bathroom, and Joe felt his naked body lowered to a spread of soft sheets. The banker’s warmth left him for a short time, and then returned, and he felt his wrist clasped between strong hands. With the buzz from the shower cleared, and the steady hands delivering steady pressure to his skin, Joe was able to calm his screaming heart, and when he opened his eyes, Christopher’s face faded, and he saw only Le Chiffre, bandaging up his cut hand with a frown and some medical gauze. Joe found a sound within his chest and released it like a whimper, drawing Le Chiffre’s eyes to his own. 

“Why are you so kind to me?” Joe asked. 

Le Chiffre wiped at his cloudy eye, and his finger came away with a stain of red. “Because we are both the product of violent times,” he answered softly, the divine rhythm of his voice lulling Joe into a peaceful reverie. “Rest, Mr. Connor, and then we will see what times await us next.”

Joe let his lids fall heavy over his eyes, and he fell into an exhausted sleep as Le Chiffre tended his wound and covered his body in soft, expensive sheets.


	2. Chapter 2

The heat of the classroom was stifling even in the early April mornings, and Joe wiped sweat from his upper lip before lifting his mug to sip at his coffee. He was alone; it was the quiet time before the students began to stream through the doorway, loud and excited and ready to learn from the textbooks Joe would hand out. The quiet before the storm, Joe thought with a smile. He loved those early morning moments. Just him, his coffee, and the warm breeze drifting through the pane-less windows, ruffling the pages of the most recent book he couldn’t put down. 

The coffee was hot, and he took it black. In England, he had taken it with milk, and it had been tea. But in Rwanda, Joe discovered himself to be a coffee man, and in Rwanda, it was simpler to be simple and drink it black. He had grown used to the bitterness quickly, adjusted to it, until he reached the point where he preferred it. Christopher had offered him a spoonful of powdered creamer the other day and Joe had waved it away with a laugh. ‘No thanks,’ he had said, lifting his mug proudly. ‘I’m all set.’

He set the mug on his desk and dog-eared the yellowed pages of his book. ‘The Iliad,’ for the zillionth time. The next part was the most worn, as well as the hardest to get through. Joe would insist, if anyone ever bothered asking, that the water stains marking the death of Patroclus were spills from a drink. Not his tears. Definitely not. He smiled sadly and ran his hand down the spine of the paperback, and then set it down. He would let Patroclus and Achilles live happily for a bit longer. At least until he had finished teaching for the day.  


He pushed his sleeves to his elbows, fabric already trying to stick to his skin, and walked to the open door, leaning against the frame. It was one of those days, one of those perfect, clear-blue-sky days that carried a promise on the wind that one was exactly where and when one needed to be in space and time. A day for hot coffee, a favorite book, and a chance to teach children who genuinely wanted to learn. 

A good day.

They were too few.

And as the wind was wont to change, in the span of a smile the perfect blue sky began to darken with a force of gray clouds. Joe lifted his head to watch. They roiled above, swirling and turbulent and blackening with alarming swiftness. The wind shifted, became a gale, and the morning’s birdsong was replaced with a roaring howl that sent Joe’s hands to cover his ears. He stepped back into the cover of the classroom as the first drops of rain, warm and fat, began to plummet from the stormy sky. 

A ragged breath sounded behind him, and Joe turned to find his classroom suddenly full with students. He jumped, surprised to see them, but pleased. They were inside, out of the storm, safe. Joe always took special care that his students felt safe in his classroom. A laugh escaped his lips as he excused his absent-mindedness, and he hurried down the aisle of occupied desks. He passed Marie, and touched her shoulder. She moved her head to face him, to smile at him, he suspected. She smiled at him every day. Marie had a lovely smile. 

But when she turned and Joe opened his mouth the say hello, he saw the truth in her form. Her skin shined, not with the healthful sheen of a hard-won race with friends, but with a film of dark, tacky blood. It plastered over her eyes, clogging her nostrils and painting shut her mouth. Red and sticky. It made Joe balk when he saw it, and when he tried to pull his hand away from her shoulder, it stuck to her skin. He was afraid to yank his hand, afraid her flesh would fall away in his palm, and so he stood, horrified, staring at the girl who stared at him, blinded with her mask of gore. 

Joe twisted his head to the side, to seek another student to help. Someone should fetch Christopher, or a doctor, because something was wrong with Marie, and he knew she must be in serious danger. His heart pounded as he searched the room, trying to catch the eye of another student, but none would face him. He tried to call to them, but his throat refused to work. He was incapable of making noise. Could he have the same sickness that plagued Marie? 

Outside the rain fell in dense sheets, and Joe could smell it, but it was wrong somehow. Usually the rains smelled like flowers with the slightest twinge of sewage, not entirely disagreeable once one got used to it. But now he breathed deep through his nose, and the skin in his nostrils burned with an acidic, coppery tang that rested thick on the back of his tongue. He tried once more to pull his hand from Marie’s shoulder, and this time it came away with ease, and he stepped from her thankfully. But she slumped forward in her chair, blood-plastered face falling to a thud against the desk. 

Joe wiped his hand on his jeans and walked to his own desk at the front of the classroom and picked up his book. He turned his eyes to face his students and saw they were all slumping forward, one at a time. In short order, not a one sat upright in their chair, and Joe jumped up on his desk, swinging his legs over the side and opening his story to the page with the folded edge. It was sprinkled with red teardrops, and he nodded his head understandingly. They must be Achilles’ tears. 

He lifted his head to inform his students that Patroclus had fallen in battle, and that they all must mourn his death, but he could not speak and his students were still folded forward, only now they were covered in flies. Joe pouted. He wanted to teach them about burning loved ones on the pyres, but could not if all of his students were dead. Irritated, he sprung from his perch on the desk, but when his sneakered foot hit the ground, it slid, and he fell forward, into a puddle of blood. With his face lying in the mess, he could see where it came from, dripping in rivers down the desks and running to pool in the center of the aisle. 

Joe was so angry with his students. Their blood had gotten all over his book. He tried to push himself up. He did not like to scold them, but when they acted so out of turn he really had no choice. The blood stuck to his face and he could not pry himself loose. He opened his mouth to yell, to ask Marie to get the nuns, but the blood filled his mouth and made him choke. The red rivers flowed steadily down the chair-legs of his students, streaming towards him. The puddle was rising. The blood filled Joe’s nose, and it kept rising. Soon he could not see anything but red. He struggled as though in a pool of tar, coughing and swallowing and choking on the lifeblood of slaughtered children. 

Who would burn him on the pyre and gather his ashes after? Who would mark his grave if his body sank beneath a river of blood?

Joe wasn’t breathing. He thrashed until he was free of his prison of sheets, and his body was freefalling, down, down, down until he smacked against soft carpet and his eyes shot open. He sat up, rigid and horror-struck, with a gasp of breath, just like they did in the movies, and he thought it was strange. He hadn’t known people could wake up so afraid. That brand of fear was never supposed to find him. He was just a teacher. 

He was drenched in sweat and his breaths were weak and raspy. And he was on the floor. Why was he on the floor? Why was he at all? He could taste the blood in his mouth, and it made him sick. Joe clenched a fist to his stomach, and shifted to his knees, where he proceeded to double over violently and dry heave. 

Nothing in his stomach but water, he made an awful sound as he retched, loud and impossible to stop. It hurt, but the spasms seemed endless. Joe did not know how long he was bent over, grabbing his belly in pain, but after a time, he felt something cold press to his forehead, a washcloth. And then a soothing voice was hushing him, and his hair was combed back from his eyes. When his body had blessedly stilled and he no longer shook with heaving, Joe glanced up. Kneeling at his side with a worried frown was the banker. The cipher. 

“Le Chiffre,” the teacher croaked. His voice was ruined with stomach bile, and it hurt to swallow. The man beside him brought a glass of ice water to his lips, and Joe took a tiny drink. He was thirsty, but he knew if he drank too much he might throw it up. “I don’t want to throw up in front of you,” Joe admitted, and Le Chiffre laughed softly and set the glass aside. 

“I brought you a trashcan,” the man said, and he pointed to the beautiful ceramic bowl sitting in front of Joe. How long had it been there? How long had he been gagging into something that looked like a priceless heirloom while the handsome, foreign banker/kidnapper wiped at his brow and poured him glasses of water? With ice? Joe groaned. 

“It’s okay if you need to be sick again, Mr. Connor,” Le Chiffre said. “That’s why I brought you the trashcan.”

“Thank you,” Joe said with a harshness he didn’t mean. “You don’t have to stay. I’m fine.”

Le Chiffre watched as Joe tried to rise from his knees with trembling limbs, but when Joe got to his feet, he swayed. He was saved from a fall by quick hands, and led to the bed. Joe sat down, embarrassed and sweaty and sick. When Le Chiffre offered him the water a second time, Joe held it himself and sipped it cautiously. It was almost sweet. 

It almost chased the phantom taste of blood from his mouth. 

When Le Chiffre reached his hand out to touch Joe’s head, he recoiled, spilling water all over himself and the bed. Le Chiffre retracted his hand and held it up in a gesture of apology. “I frightened you,” he said.

Joe shook his head. “No. It’s fine.”

“You have a cut at your hairline,” Le Chiffre said. “You’re bleeding.”

It might have been funny, this situation Joe Conner found himself in. Soaked with sweat and Evian water, bleeding, throwing up. He was getting his bodily fluids all over this man’s everything. “I reckon I’m quite the mess,” Joe said weakly. 

“Life is messy,” Le Chiffre said with a shrug. “That is what spare sheets are for. A moment, Mr. Connor.”

Joe watched as the man sauntered to the ornate chest beneath the window seat. He bent over, and Joe found himself looking away. He would not linger on Le Chiffre’s backside while he fished innocently for fresh bed-dressings. In the time it took Joe to gather his trembling body from the bed, Le Chiffre had found what he was after, and returned with a bundle of crisp linen sheets in his arms, as well as an extra pillow. Joe stared blankly at the sheets. They were red. He blinked and looked away. 

“Death is messy,” Joe said as he stood to the side, holding his empty water glass. He watched as Le Chiffre picked the damp sheets from the mattress and threw them to the floor, and wondered if this strange scene wasn’t also a dream. 

Le Chiffre hummed thoughtfully as he threw the red sheets in the air, holding one end at the foot of the bed, so they spread in the air and billowed gently down into perfect position over the mattress. “Did death reach for you in your sleep?” he asked casually. He did not look at Joe, kept his eyes on the sheets he smoothed with care. It made it easier for Joe to answer. 

“I fell off the bed,” he said. 

“Ah,” was all Le Chiffre said for a time as he tucked the edges of the sheet beneath the mattress and moved for the blanket that had been rudely thrown to the floor, another victim of Joe’s tossing and turning, it would seem. When the blanket was settled, and Le Chiffre had poofed the pillow sufficiently, he finally turned to address Joe. “I hope you will allow me to check that cut.”

Joe crossed his arms over his chest, and when he felt the cold glass press against his bare skin, that’s when he finally noticed, clueless dolt that he was, that he was stark naked. “Oh,” he said with a squeak, and he practically fell into the bed and burrowed beneath the covers, cool sheets slipping pleasantly over his body. Le Chiffre watched, but made no comment. After an awkward pause, Joe spoke. “My head is fine, but thank you for offering.” Polite, he thought. A polite decline, and now the man would leave him to die of embarrassment or lay awake the remainder of the night, too terrified to sleep. 

Only Le Chiffre did not leave. He took a step toward the bed. “It’s bleeding. At least allow me to clean it so you will not spoil the sheets. I’m afraid I do not have a third set so readily available.”  


From his nest of covers, Joe watched Le Chiffre approach slowly. He still wore his black suit, though the tie was gone now, and a second button had been relinquished to further show the patch of silvering hair spreading over a broad chest. The jacket was open, and Joe’s eyes traced the length of Le Chiffre’s abdomen, down the row of black shirt buttons, past his waistline that no longer boasted the fine leather belt. Another step forward, and Le Chiffre was leaning in, leaning toward him. He lifted his hand, slowly, meeting Joe’s eyes in a silent plea for permission. Joe’s gaze flitted over Le Chiffre’s face. The hair that had been slicked back was hanging loose now, and when he bent his head to examine Joe’s cut, it swept over his brow, and fell over his left eye, the milky white one peppered with scars. His eyebrows, pale on a sharp ridge, lifted marginally in question. Joe exhaled shakily and nodded. Permission to touch granted.

And so Le Chiffre touched him. It was a gentle touch of fingers to forehead, his second hand pushing back Joe’s hair while Le Chiffre squinted over him in the candlelit bedroom. He clicked his tongue thoughtfully, and Joe felt a flutter of breath on his skin. “It is shallow,” the man said after a minute’s worth of scattered touches. “It’s always the harmless cuts that bleed the most.” Joe nodded, licking his lips, and thinking of his dream. “A fresh washcloth should do,” he continued promptly as he ended his examination. “Excuse me,” he said and then he was walking from the room, disappearing into the washroom. 

Joe could hear the faucet running. He looked down at his hand, and frowned at the bandage wrapped around it. When had he – oh, right. He remembered smashing the shower stall and sighed, falling back on the bed in defeat and shame. Naked and bleeding, he had been carried to the bed and tended by the man who was already making his way back to him at present, damp washcloth in his hand and cautious smile on his face. Joe’s cheeks burned bright red, and he was thankful for the shade of night, because it only grew worse, spreading down to color his chest, when Le Chiffre sat beside him on the bed and pressed the rag to his cut to ease away the drying blood. 

“I don’t make a habit of leaking my DNA over everything,” Joe said, aiming for brevity but ending somewhere in pathetic-ness. 

Le Chiffre’s smile broadened, and Joe’s eyes darted to his mouth, the soft lips spreading over slightly crooked teeth. Sharp canines, he noted, and then the smile faded. “You make a habit of apologizing for that which is out of your control,” Le Chiffre said softly, his voice deep and resonating and so close. “Life is messy,” he repeated. “Be glad you are alive to leak DNA all over everything, Mr. Connor.” His eyes swept down and found Joe’s. “I am glad.”

A crimson flush and thick swallow, and then Joe attempted a response. “In my dream, I was choking on blood,” he said. Then he cringed. He had not meant to say that. He had meant to compliment the quality of Le Chiffre’s washcloths or the sweetness of the water, not weigh them both down with the visions of nightmares. But Le Chiffre seemed unbothered. He finished his business with the cloth, and when he brought it away from Joe’s head, it was pink. 

“Was it your blood that choked you?” he asked, accent stirring Joe’s chest, and the schoolteacher shook his head in answer. Le Chiffre shifted on the bed but did not leave it, although his task was complete. “I, too, have trouble sleeping,” he said. 

“Is that why you’re dressed to the nines in the middle of the night?” Joe asked him. 

“I would not call this ‘dressed to the nines,’” Le Chiffre said, “but I was awake when I heard you, yes.”

Joe turned from his back and brought his hands to rest beneath his head. “What do you do when you can’t sleep?” he asked. 

Le Chiffre considered for a moment before answering. “This night I have been concluding a business transaction,” he said. 

“Just you saying that makes me tired,” Joe said. “What about other nights?” He didn’t want to think about blood and death. He wanted to hear the banker’s voice speaking to him in the dark. Beside him, Le Chiffre shifted again on the mattress, so Joe scooted back, increasing the space in which the suited man had to sit. 

“On other nights, I read,” Le Chiffre said, adjusting to the widened space on the bed. He lifted a knee to rest a foot on the mattress. His shoes were off, Joe saw, and his socks were black and, as he had guessed, silk. “Some nights, sleep evades me completely.”

Joe moved further back, until he was on the other side of the bed. “Your business transaction tonight,” he began on hushed breath, “was it concerning your UN captives?” 

Le Chiffre looked at the space made for him on the bed with curious eyes. “Yes.”

“And did you finish your business?” he asked and Le Chiffre nodded his head once, elegantly, his hair falling over his eye and softening the sharp angles of his face. “And will you read now?” Joe inquired in a voice little more than a whisper. 

“I might,” Le Chiffre said, and then he was up from the bed and sweeping from the room. 

Joe was left in dimness, curled up under the blankets and new sheets. He sighed, exhausted, worn and weary. When Le Chiffre returned a few moments later, it was with a fresh glass of water in one hand, and a book in the other. The teacher was stunned. He had not expected for him to return, but when the water was set on the table beside him, and Le Chiffre moved to sit on the other side of the bed, Joe was glad. 

Both legs, this time, Le Chiffre propped up over the covers, stretching long and lean beneath his tailored black trousers. His back pressed high against the headboard, and he looked at Joe, lying beside him. Their bodies were close, but they did not touch. They were both very careful not to touch. 

“I would read in here, if that was agreeable to you,” Le Chiffre said. 

Joe shrugged against his pillow. “What are you reading?” he asked. 

Le Chiffre opened the book, flashing the cover for Joe to examine. 

The Odyssey. 

“You can read in here if you want,” Joe said after a moment’s held breath. “But only if you read it out loud,” he added nonchalantly.

Le Chiffre let slip a small smile, and then he turned to a page, yellowed and dog-eared.


	3. Chapter 3

Joe didn’t remember falling asleep. He only recalled Le Chiffre’s Albanian drawl, and the way the bed bounced when Le Chiffre moved with fractional adjustments and carefully executed stretches. Odysseus had been in a cave with Calypso, and he knew he should be travelling home to Penelope but could not muster the will to leave. 

And then the sun was streaming golden through the venetian blinds and Joe’s eyes were opening, and he lifted his heavy head from the pillow to look beside him on the bed. Le Chiffre wasn’t there.  


He sat up, red sheets falling to rest around his waist. He scrunched up his eyes at the brightness of the room, and his skin pulled tight around the cut on his forehead. With a seeking finger he felt the scab at his hairline. It was small. The cuts on his hand would be much worse, but he was in no hurry to check beneath the bandages. 

He was sitting in bed staring at his hands when Le Chiffre stepped quietly into the bedroom. He held two coffee cups in his hands and wore a black suit, a different cut from yesterday’s, but equally crisp and rich. His hair was combed neatly back, and Joe thought he was pure grace as he pushed the door closed with his polished shoe and stalked the length of the room. 

“Good morning,” Le Chiffre said, holding out the cup for Joe. 

“Good morning,” Joe said, accepting. He peered over the edge of the mug into the reflection of steaming black coffee. “Thank you.”

“There is cream, if you wish,” the other man offered.

“No, thank you. I like it this way,” Joe insisted. He wanted to ask if Le Chiffre had slept, if he had stayed with him in the bed for the remainder of the night, but one look at his serious expression made Joe refrain. To busy his mouth, he took a sip of the coffee. It tasted expensive and smooth and hot on his tongue. How Le Chiffre must taste, Joe thought with a blush. 

“It’s hot,” Le Chiffre warned, mistaking Joe’s red, flustered face for a simple burnt mouth. Thank god.

“It’s very good,” Joe said, but he blew at the steam for good measure before bringing it to his lips again. He swallowed and it filled his stomach with pleasant heat. Le Chiffre watched him sip, and Joe tried not to notice, but when he finally turned away to drink his own coffee by the window, Joe stifled his sigh of relief into the mug. 

The men were silent as they finished their drinks, and after a while, Joe only felt slightly awkward. 

“I should call my mum,” Joe said after he downed the last dredges of coffee. 

Le Chiffre, who had set his mug on the windowsill in order to open the blinds and let in the warm spring air, turned at the teacher’s pronouncement. “Yes, you should,” he agreed. 

Beneath the sheets, Joe fidgeted. “Do you, I mean, may I - ”

“Use my phone?” Le Chiffre provided generously. “Of course you may, Mr. Connor.” He closed his eyes and lifted his face to the sun briefly before leaving the glow of the window and walking to a door Joe had thus far ignored. Le Chiffre twisted the brass knob and pulled, revealing a closet, and then he looked over his shoulder at Joe. “The phone is in the study,” he said apologetically. “It might please you to dress before you venture from this room.”

Joe hugged the sheet up to his bare chest. “Right,” he stammered. “If you could just…I left my clothes on the bathroom floor, I think,” he said. “I’m sorry, I should have folded them and – if you could tell me where they are, I’ll just get dressed.” The thought of putting those clothes back on sickened him, but what choice did he have? It would not do to go about the rest of his life naked. He bit his lip, then instantly released it, eyebrows quirking at Le Chiffre in question. 

“Your clothes are in a garbage bin downstairs,” Le Chiffre informed him with a slight frown. “I was going to have them washed, but decided against it. I hope I haven’t offended.” He looked genuinely concerned, and Joe laughed.

“I had planned to burn them,” Joe said. “You’ve saved me the trouble.” When Le Chiffre still looked bothered, Joe scratched at the shadow of scruff along his jaw and sighed. “Really. Their absence is a relief to me.” He would not have to face the blood stains or the heady scent of fear-drenched sweat. 

Suddenly brazen, Joe cinched the sheet around his waist and stood from the bed. He swayed with dizziness only for a moment. Soon he would have to eat something, but now he had to dress. He joined Le Chiffre by the closet, closing the distance between them with as much poise as he could whilst wrapped in bed linens. “Have anything in my size?” he asked, trying to sound playful, but his voice came out deeper than he’d meant and the words uncoiled flirtatiously from his Judas lips. Joe wondered if Le Chiffre thought him naturally beet-faced at this point, since he was certain he’d spent seventy-five percent of their time together blushing like an idiot. 

If Le Chiffre noticed the flirtation or the flushed cheeks that followed, he was too gentlemanly to let on. His back was already to Joe, arms brushing across hangers as he searched wholeheartedly for something suitable to befit the toga-clad teacher. 

“Anything is fine,” Joe said. 

Le Chiffre’s reply was muffled within starched collars and poly-blends, but Joe thought it sounded much like a huff of vexation. He stepped closer and leaned forward, trying to see over the taller man’s shoulder as he pushed past one shirt, and then another, and then another, the scrape of wire hangers sliding over the pole. “You’re quite the clothes horse,” Joe observed, and only when Le Chiffre’s back tensed did he realize how close he had drawn, inexcusably, impolitely close. Joe had practically whispered in the man’s sodding ear. He backed off immediately and Le Chiffre continued the hunt, comment-less. 

Joe briefly considered apologizing for the breech of personal space, but decided against it. Unnecessary. Le Chiffre was already pulling a hanger from the closet and turning to Joe, who now, comically, stood several feet away. A muscle twitched beneath Le Chiffre’s eye, the scarred one, as he presented the option. 

“It’s an ensemble,” Joe said stupidly, and Le Chiffre’s eye twitched once more. “I mean,” he mumbled, eyes running up and down the man’s selection: white collar shirt of soft cotton, grey slacks of, ugh, Joe didn’t know what the fabric was. He was a teacher in Rwanda. He wore the same pair of jeans until they ripped, and then he kept wearing them until the rips became obscene. The clothes Le Chiffre held out for him were probably worth more than everything Joe owned combined. But he took them from Le Chiffre’s extended hand all the same. “I’ll try not to mess them up. Thank you.”

“Save your thanks until we’ve made sure it all fits,” Le Chiffre said, slipping the shirt from its hanger and holding it up against Joe’s bare chest. “I am bigger than you, I believe.” 

Joe’s pupils swelled in blue irises at the sensation of Le Chiffre’s knuckles brushing against the smooth skin of his collarbone. The man, seemingly oblivious to the reaction of his delicate touch, took a step to stand directly behind his houseguest and swept both arms around the slender teacher’s frame. “Hmm,” he said, more to himself than to Joe, who was trembling inexplicably between the cage of Le Chiffre’s arms. “Your shoulders may be broader than mine,” he said, accent heavy and blowing cool air along Joe’s neck. Le Chiffre’s hands briefly traced the outline of Joe’s shoulders and skimmed over his biceps, the touches so light their skin barely touched at all, and then he withdrew completely, and Joe was left with the white shirt dangling loosely in his fist. “Slip it on,” came the command at his back, and Joe swallowed harshly. 

“Right,” said Joe, to mask the little sound that had risen up from his throat uninvited. He slid an arm through one sleeve, and then the other, and then he pulled the shirt to its resting place atop his shoulders, shoulders that were, indeed, slightly broader than Le Chiffre’s, but not by a vast enough measurement to make the shirt un-wearable. Joe turned to face the banker, his fine white shirt unbuttoned and caressing soft whispers of fabric against his stomach. 

The Albanian banker’s face was inscrutable. “How does it feel?” he asked Joe, who looked half ridiculous with his top finely attired and his bottom wrapped in a sheet. 

“It’s fine,” Joe said. What else could he say? Le Chiffre handed him the gray slacks next and, for a moment, Joe thought he would step behind him again, maybe kneel down and help him slide the fabric up his legs. His hands would twine around Joe’s waist and fasten the buckle and then smooth over his hips. 

“I will leave you to finish and await you in the study,” Le Chiffre said, ripping Joe’s ill-timed fantasy apart by the seams. “Join me when you are ready. It’s the door at the end of the hall with the crystal handle.”

“Crystal handle,” Joe repeated as he twisted the slacks in his sweaty palms. “Got it.” 

He watched Le Chiffre leave the room, and grinned politely when the man paid him a glance over his shoulder before shutting the door and leaving Joe to put on his own trousers. 

 

Joe was accustomed to wearing underpants, and as the fabric of Le Chiffre’s loaned slacks swished against his groin as he walked down the hallway, he was dreadfully aware of their absence. He felt vulnerable, exposed, and shame-facedly aroused at the sensation. He stopped outside the door with the crystal handle and took a few breaths to steady himself. Since he had woken in Le Chiffre’s bed, tangled in Le Chiffre’s sheets, body tensed beneath Le Chiffre’s gaze, he had felt himself growing increasingly, unexplainably…fevered? Was fevered the right word? 

It was the trauma, Joe reasoned. Less than twenty-four hours ago he had been in the middle of the most horrifying experience of his life. A handsome man had swooped in and taken him back to a mansion, where he tended to his wounds, read him to sleep, and dressed him in clothes that smelled like fresh rain. The trauma. The shock. The surreal blur of Joe’s situation. These were the ingredients to blame for his blushing cheeks and damp palms and burgeoning…

“Oh, no, no, no,” Joe cursed, his hands flying to sink into his hair with punishing tugs. He took a deep breath and thought of his mother, whom he was fixing to ring. The untimely stirring ceased. “Jesus Christ,” he breathed and was just settling his hand to the crystal when it turned on its own volition and the door swung open. 

Le Chiffre stood at the threshold, an expectant shine in his unmarked eye. He cocked his head at Joe, his eerie stare surveying the length of the body before him, and then his lips spread into a thin smile. “Comfortable?” he asked, stepping aside and waving his hand to invite Joe inside the study. 

Joe’s eyebrows lifted, crinkling his forehead and tightening the skin around his cut. “Comfortable?” he asked Le Chiffre in a voice riddled with confusion. He entered the study and tried to think of an appropriate response. Was he comfortable? No, how could he be? He was hungry and tired and sick and barely fighting off an erection that had no business erecting whatsoever, and – Le Chiffre was looking at him with a queer expression on his face. “What?” Joe asked, wearily.

“The pants, do they fit? Are they comfortable?” asked Le Chiffre. 

“Oh. The pants,” Joe said, and then, because he was an utterly stupid fool of a man, he turned in a showy circle in order to model the gray slacks. At the end of his spin, it sunk in that he had, in fact, just spun to present his backside fully to Le Chiffre. He slapped his hand over his face. “They are comfortable. Thank you,” he mumbled, face hidden. 

“Think nothing of it,” the man said. “The telephone is on my desk.” 

Joe remained a statue of humiliation in the doorway of the study, hand obscuring his face, until he felt a gentle grip on his wrist. He gasped his surprise at the man standing inches away and lowering Joe’s hand from over his eyes with a smile. “Is there anything else you would like, Mr. Connor?” Le Chiffre asked. He was taller, and Joe had to look up to meet his eyes. From such a close distance, Joe could count every black eyelash and spot the first signs of stubble sprouting over a strong jaw. 

He gulped. Joe actually gulped. “Like what?” he asked, hating the breathiness of his voice. Le Chiffre still held his wrist and his skin burned like fire against his own. 

“Like breakfast,” Le Chiffre said, releasing Joe and stepping past him to the door. “I can have the kitchen make you something.”

Joe could have collapsed from the burst of tension. The undoubtedly one-sided tension. “Breakfast would be fantastic,” he sighed.

“Then I will allow you your privacy and have something whipped up,” Le Chiffre said. He held his hands to the lapels of his ebony suit jacket and paid Joe a polite bow before spinning on his heels and leaving the study. 

And Joe was alone. 

The desk was positioned in the center of the room over a – Joe squinted to make sure his eyes did not deceive him – tiger skin rug. Behind the desk there was a fireplace. He wondered on what occasion Le Chiffre could possibly have use for a roaring fire in the middle of Africa. Then he wondered why he cared, and shook the analysis from his head. He needed to call his mother, not speculate over the practicalities of a stranger’s fireplace.

His hand reached out for the phone sitting at the edge of the desk. It was black with a shiny plastic surface, and Joe could make out the smudges of prior fingerprints. He cradled it to his ear and punched in the number he knew by heart.

Ring, ring. Joe prepared himself for the sound of his mother’s voice.

Ring, ring. She would be so pleased to hear from him.

Ring, ring. Had she thought him dead all these days?

Ring, ring. “Hello,” a sweet voice greeted him on the other end of the line. “You’ve reached the Connor residence. Sorry we’re not at home at the moment. If you leave your name and number, we’ll call you back as soon as we can. Thank you. Have a blessed day.”

Joe shut his eyes and waited for the beep. 

Beeeeep. 

“Mum, it’s me. It’s Joe,” he said into the phone. “I can’t leave my number or tell you where I am, really, because I’m not entirely sure. But I’m okay. I was separated from the UN, but I’m safe, and I’m coming home soon.” His voice trembled, but he would not let his mother hear him crying in his message. With a rallying breath, he continued in a stronger tone. “I love you. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.” 

He hung up, laying the phone to rest gently in its receiver. It would have to be good enough. At least she would know he was alive. Hell, Joe thought, his mother probably had a better grasp on reality than he did at present, standing in a house with crystal knobs and exotic animal skins and the like. 

“Mr. Connor?” said a voice from the hall, and Joe turned. 

“Le Chiffre,” Joe answered, because he did not know what else to say. 

“Did you make your call?” the man asked and Joe nodded. “Is your mother well?”

“I don’t know how she is,” replied Joe with a shrug. “It went to voicemail.”

“You were able to leave her a message?” Le Chiffre asked.

“Yes,” Joe said.

“Good,” Le Chiffre said, and then, “come with me, if you please.”

“Alright,” said Joe, and he followed behind Le Chiffre as they walked down the long hallway.

 

Their journey ended in a dining room, the glass-topped table already set with a plate of food. Le Chiffre startled Joe (Joe was far too easy to startle lately) when he pulled out a chair for him. After Joe apologized for jumping out of his skin, he thanked Le Chiffre and took an obedient seat in the satin lined chair ordained for him. 

“I hope the food is to your liking,” said Joe’s forever-polite host, and the teacher looked at the meal laid before him: Eggs Benedict. 

“It looks delicious,” Joe admitted, leaning down to welcome a greedy whiff into his nose. “Are you not eating?”

Le Chiffre pulled out a chair for himself, across the table from Joe, and sat down. “I broke my fast earlier this morning,” he told him. “You were still sleeping.”

Joe’s streak of being a normal shade for a human was demolished by Le Chiffre’s words. His blush was monstrous as he shoved a forkful of hollandaise-drenched muffin into his mouth. As if he needed a reminder that they had shared a bed last night.

“Is it good?” Le Chiffre inquired of Joe’s mouthful, and Joe nodded with an accompanying hum of approval. “Good.”

After he swallowed and patted his mouth with a napkin, Joe smiled. “It’s very good,” he said. He did not add that literally anything would have been good at that point. Joe rewound his brain to search for the time of his last meal, and he could not pinpoint it. No, that wasn’t true. The last thing to pass between his lips had been the body of Christ. Joe’s fork fell to the plate with a clatter. 

“Mr. Connor?” Le Chiffre addressed him with alarm, but Joe didn’t hear. His head was ringing with the echoes of screams. 

A baby crying in the tall grass. 

Joe’s fingers gripped against the table as they had gripped against the chain-link fence, when he had watched helplessly as a mother was cut down, and then her baby, with brutal chops of a machete. 

“Oh no,” Joe gasped, and he pushed out of his chair in a trembling panic that felled him swiftly to his knees. Le Chiffre was with him on the floor, but Joe did not feel the arms around his shoulders. He felt the strap of his rucksack digging into his back as he pushed through the desperate throng to the vans. He saw Marie’s face find his through the frightened crowd, the realization dawning in her eyes that he was leaving them, leaving her, to end up like the mother and her baby beyond the fence. 

“No,” Joe cried on the dining room floor while Le Chiffre tried to ease his shakes with comforting hands. 

Time was an absent thing, past Joe’s comprehension as he played and replayed the scene behind his eyes, but when his vision finally began to return, and he saw reality in front of him un-blur with tearful clarity, Le Chiffre was there. He was right there, and Joe clung to him.

His eyes were impossibly bright and blue, and their intensity nearly stole Le Chiffre’s breath away. His fingers dug into his jacket pocket and wrapped around the inhaler hidden there. 

“What can I do?” Le Chiffre asked him.

Tears streaked down Joe’s face and his fists tightened around Le Chiffre’s tie. “Get me the hell out of Africa,” he said with a broken voice. “Please get me out.”


	4. Chapter 4

The drink burned Joe’s throat as he swallowed it down, ignoring the brows that lifted in slight alarm at the swiftness of its consumption. In fact, Le Chiffre looked bold enough to open his mouth with warnings of ‘take it easy’ or ‘not so fast,’ but before the man could utter a single plea for caution, the whiskey was emptied from the tumbler. The crystal tumbler, Joe noted with amusement, before setting it to the kitchen bar. 

“Thank you,” Joe said. He licked his lips and balanced on the white leather padding of the stool. Le Chiffre leaned against the bar beside him. Not close enough to be intrusive, but close enough so that if, or when, which seemed more likely, Joe fell, Le Chiffre could catch him. 

Joe watched Le Chiffre curiously from his place on the barstool. How many times in the past twelve hours had that man saved him from a fall? Enough times for Joe to be embarrassed about it, certainly. How many times, for that matter, had he filled his hand with drink? The teacher coughed reservedly into the bend of his elbow, and then he asked, in his voice still raspy from his previous upset, “May I have another?”

Long, elegant fingers came to press against Le Chiffre’s left temple, and Joe couldn’t hide the small smile the already familiar gesture brought to his lips. “I hope you don’t think this rude, but perhaps you should wait for the first drink to settle before tucking in to a second,” said Le Chiffre. 

Joe rubbed a bandaged knuckle over his eye. “Is that a no?” he asked the man leaning at the bar with practiced airiness. 

“It’s an ‘ask me in a few minutes,’” responded Le Chiffre. 

The teacher nodded. He didn’t need another drink; the first was already beginning to settle his nerves, frayed as they were. Ten minutes ago, Joe had been a pathetic heap of hyperventilating tears, tangling his limbs within Le Chiffre’s firm grip. And the man had never left him. He stayed on the dining room floor with Joe until the horror show behind his eyes had stopped, and then he had helped him stand, and they had walked together, Le Chiffre’s arm wrapped supportively about Joe’s waist, to the kitchen. Le Chiffre had practically lifted Joe onto the barstool and then proceeded to fix him a generous serving of alcohol. With ice. 

And now, here they were. The tremors in Joe’s hands were subsiding, and his stomach felt coated with comforting heat, but there was an unspeakable crackle of tension in the room, between the two strangers, and it tugged an uneasy sigh from the teacher. Outside the window was a constant roar of singing cicadas. Joe guessed they were cicadas, anyway. Whatever the insect, he let his attention focus on the sound, even turning his head to the window, as if he wished to hear them better. He didn’t, of course, but the strain of being alone with Le Chiffre made him hunger for a distraction. Look at the clock on the wall, look at the leaves on the tree outside, look at your hands, just don’t stare at Le Chiffre. Such was his mantra. But it was a difficult task, not staring at Le Chiffre. He had a face for staring. Was that Joe’s fault? Still, he settled his eyes to his lap, where his wrapped hand folded over his thigh.

“Is your hand causing you much pain this morning, Mr. Connor?” Le Chiffre asked after a lengthy stretch of silence, and Joe wondered if the other man was as conscious of the tension in the room as he was. 

“My hand?” Joe asked. He held it out, flexing it in the space between them to showcase its capabilities. It did hurt a bit, and he had no qualms in telling Le Chiffre as much.

The banker nodded as if he’d expected nothing less, and then straightened from his lean against the bar. He fiddled with the cuffs of his sleeves, and then rolled them up to fold around his elbows, and Joe was treated with an eyeful of sturdy yet graceful forearms. He caught himself staring and closed his eyes, repeating the mantra in his head and feeling ridiculous. Forearms? His pulse was quickening from the sight of forearms? But they were, Joe reasoned, exceptionally nice, and he opened his eyes for another quick look. 

Le Chiffre had inched closer while Joe hid behind his eyelids, and now he was standing right in front of him, and holding out his hand, palm up, expectantly. 

“Might I check beneath the bandage, Mr. Connor?” he asked, and Joe nodded. After a brief hesitation, he placed his hand on top of Le Chiffre’s. He tried not to shudder when inspective fingers closed around his wrist and un-toiled his gauzy dressings. 

Joe inhaled a hiss of air through clenched teeth as the gauze was pried free from his scabbing gashes, tugging at his tender flesh, and he fought a wave of nausea, tasting bile and whiskey at the back of his throat. Le Chiffre rubbed his thumb back and forth over the delicate skin of Joe’s wrist as his other hand finished removing the medical wrappings. If he’d meant for it to be a distraction so Joe would forget his nausea, it worked. Joe quickly discovered he couldn’t feel sick to his stomach when he was fighting with all his might to keep his arousal at bay. He had a desperate thought that he might cross his legs, to stifle the issue, but when he moved a leg to act it out, Joe found himself, predictably, tumbling from his precarious balance atop the stool. Also predictably, Le Chiffre clasped an expert hand to steady Joe’s shoulders, stepping close to catch him against his chest. Joe’s hand, the one not still firmly gripped by Le Chiffre, shot out to its nearest clutch, which turned out to be one of the previously admired forearms. 

“I’m not usually this clumsy,” Joe said with a self-deprecating laugh. 

“The drink, perhaps, is to blame,” offered Le Chiffre kindly. He pulled his forearm lightly back, a hint of his intention, and Joe slid safely from the barstool to stand on his feet. Only when he was steady, and in no danger of immediately falling over like the world’s most pitiful sack of potatoes, did Le Chiffre put another step’s distance between them and return his attentions to removing the rest of Joe’s bandage. 

“I guess it is pretty early for hard liquor,” Joe said. 

“Says the man asking for a second,” Le Chiffre said, and Joe raised his eyebrows, surprised by the quip. The man glanced up at him. His lips were quirked in a small, self-satisfied smirk, and Joe found himself, once more, enthralled by the brilliance of the face before him. Even more enthralling was the thumb resuming its caress over his wrist as the last of the gauze was discarded. 

Joe leapt at the distraction, pulling his eyes from Le Chiffre’s face to lean his head over and examine the deep cuts on his hand. Le Chiffre also angled his head, and now their foreheads nearly touched as Joe’s hand re-entered the spotlight. 

Le Chiffre hummed thoughtfully, and Joe, who apparently had zero control of his body, couldn’t help but let his eyes dart up to catch the expression that belonged to the sound. Le Chiffre’s brow was marginally scrunched as his eyes roamed over wounded flesh. 

“What do you think?” Joe asked. He kept his voice quiet, maybe too quiet, and the shared space between them felt terribly intimate. 

“You will live, I think,” answered Le Chiffre, and then his eyes shot up to catch Joe at his staring, and Joe knew Le Chiffre could feel his rapid pulse as his thumb brushed over his wrist. “You could have been hurt much worse,” he continued, and then he directed his sharp eyes back to the hand in question. “The glass could have easily split your wrist, the way you unleashed your strength into my shower door.” 

“I might’ve bled out all over your bathroom floor,” Joe said quietly. 

“Yes,” said Le Chiffre, his voice soft.

“Good thing you came to check on me. That would’ve been quite the mess to clean up.”

“It would have been a waste,” Le Chiffre said. He squeezed a tube of antiseptic ointment onto his finger and gently began rubbing it into Joe’s cuts. They littered the sides of his hands the worst, where his fist had broken through the glass, and his knuckles had been badly shredded. 

“Yes, I’m sure you had better things to do with your evening than dispose of me,” Joe joked, and he gasped when Le Chiffre tightened his hand around his wrist. 

“A waste of precious life, not of time better spent elsewhere,” Le Chiffre amended, tone coloring slightly into something sterner, almost a scold, causing blood to flood to Joe’s cheeks. “Just because we met on a road of carnage does not mean that is the road by which I wish to travel, Mr. Connor, when given the choice.”

“Of course not,” said Joe, and he suddenly felt lightheaded. Dizzy. Sacrificing dignity in order to not faint in the banker’s arms, Joe brought his hand to Le Chiffre’s chest as an anchor. But when Le Chiffre’s hand closed over it with his own, pressing it to his chest so hard he could feel Le Chiffre’s heart beating, the opposite effect was bestowed upon his senses, and Joe felt like he was floating in the air above the exchange. 

“Mr. Connor?” Le Chiffre asked, concernedly, and Joe was pretty sure his eyelashes fluttered when he looked up, swaying. 

“I feel a bit,” Joe muttered, and his tongue felt heavy, his words sounded bogged and bleary. “A bit, um, woozy?” Le Chiffre’s features seemed to shift before his eyes, the kitchen behind him tilted and bent. Joe exhaled, a forceful puff of air, and collapsed forward. Le Chiffre caught him easily, hooking him beneath the arms to keep upright. 

“I must admit, Mr. Conner,” Le Chiffre said soothingly in his ear, “that I put something in your drink to ease your nerves.”

Joe’s head lolled back and his hazed blue eyes flitted over the man’s scarred left eye, his bowed lips, his cheekbones. Joe’s face felt hot, but good hot, comfortable hot. “Le Chiffre” he said, and the name dripped from his lips in a whisper. 

The man holding him crooked his head, leaning in slightly. “Yes, Mr. Connor?”

Joe tried to lift a hand to the man’s face. He wanted to trace his ridges with his fingers and feel the smooth and scarred skin, but he couldn’t lift his hands. He slumped completely into the mercy of Le Chiffre, even his eyes fell closed. Darkness was spiraling in on him, fast, but before he succumbed to unconsciousness, he heard himself say with a deep throated slur, “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever – ”

 

Joe opened his eyes and did not know where he was. Panic gripped him, and he sat up, clapping a hand to his forehead, eyes darting wildly about. His breaths came quickly, and he pushed himself from where he lay, crouching low to the ground. He hugged his knees, gasping. A noise sounded behind him and he jumped, half expecting the barrel of a rifle to be shoved into his face when he turned.  


It was not a gun that faced him, but a finely dressed man. It was not gunshots he had heard, but the sound of a door sliding open. 

The man in black joined Joe on the floor, his long legs folding elegantly beneath him as he sat, draping an elbow over the couch Joe had catapulted himself from moments before. 

“It is strange to wake up in strange places,” Le Chiffre said.

A short period of confused time passed for Joe before the fog cleared from his mind and he could see the glass of water the man had placed on the floor in front of him. He lifted it with both hands, his grip weak, but managed it to his lips and took a sip. The ice clinked together. “It is strange to wake up at all,” Joe said, an admission, a slip. He bit at his lower lip, head leaning back against the couch. “You drugged me.”

“I judged your pulse to be dangerously fast and took that liberty, yes,” Le Chiffre answered. 

Joe sighed, a full bodied exhale that loosened his shoulders. “I’ve been a burden to you,” he told the man, his eyes closed and head still tilted back; he had no strength to face Le Chiffre. “You should have left me on that road of carnage.” Or manhandled him into the back of one of the black vans, like the UN guards, he thought. Treated him like an actual hostage, instead of a pampered and esteemed guest, giving him ice water and fixing him meals and dressing him in expensive clothes. 

“Would you have preferred that?” Le Chiffre asked. Joe didn’t see his face, but he imagined the expression: severe and beautiful. 

“They would have found me,” Joe said. He let his head fall to the side against the couch cushion, let his eyes open to cautious slits. Le Chiffre was watching him like a hawk. 

“Most likely,” Le Chiffre agreed, and they gazed at one another. “I can’t believe that end would be your preference,” he continued. “Were that the case, you never would have been with the UN for me to stumble upon in the first place.”

Joe laughed tiredly. “'Stumble upon?’” he asked. “I saw your spike in the road, Le Chiffre.”

The man’s lip twitched, not with a smile, but with the shadow of something else, something more menacing than Joe wished to delve into the depths of at the moment. He cleared his throat.

“Nevertheless,” Le Chiffre said, glossing over the pause, “you already made your decision to survive. You made it before I…stumbled upon you. And I do not consider your survival a burden, in any shape or form.” Joe’s lips parted to speak, but he had no words. Luckily, Le Chiffre seemed to have ample enough for the both of them. “I do understand that you are suffering, Mr. Connor, and that you require therapy and security to help you through your recent trauma. And that brings us to our next topic of discussion.”

“Oh?” Joe asked, only partially following. 

“You wished to leave Africa, but you did not tell me where, specifically, you would like to go.”

“Oh,” Joe said, lifting up at last from his recline and running a hand through his hair. It was still soft from his shower last night, and he could feel where it had dried curly and wild. “Well, I’m sure it’s not as easy as all that. Are flights even leaving the region right now? What with the coup and the plane being shot down?”

“This plane had no trouble,” Le Chiffre said simply. 

Joe blinked at him. “What do you mean, this plane?”

Le Chiffre blinked back at him. “The plane we are currently on, Mr. Connor,” he said as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. And to anyone other than poor, dumbfounded, drug-addled Joe, it might’ve been. 

He staggered to his feet, seeing Le Chiffre following in his peripheral, and walked the few paces to the pinstriped curtain hanging on the wall. He pushed it to the side on its rod.

Puffy clouds. Blue sky. 

“We’re on a bloody plane?” Joe balked, and suddenly he could feel the tell-tale vibrations beneath his feet and the steady hum of an engine in his ears.

“I hope you’re not afraid of flying?” Le Chiffre inquired with a bothered frown, and Joe turned to face him, bewildered.

“You drugged my drink and put me on a plane?” Joe asked the man in front of him. 

“Yes.”

Joe’s mouth worked open and closed, beginning and ending several new thoughts in a rushed row, until he settled on the one he thought most important. “Where are we going?” the befuddled teacher asked. 

“That’s what I was trying to discuss with you, Mr. Connor, if you would have a seat?” Le Chiffre waved a hand toward the couch, and Joe complied, because what else could he possibly do?  
He stared, wide-eyed and surprised, as Le Chiffre took a seat beside him, folding one leg over the other with casual grace. 

“This plane is a private plane of my employers,” began Le Chiffre, “and it is in route to Paris, France, where I will be needed to conduct a series of business appointments.” He took a pause to gauge Joe’s reaction thus far. Since blushing cheeks and owlish eyes were nothing new to the banker concerning his teacher, he took a small breath and carried on. “I have arranged for a driver to take you anywhere you like, once we’ve landed. Any travel expense will be paid for by me, happily. I regret not being able to fly you directly home, which I assume is somewhere near London, judging by your accent, but my business in Paris is urgent and cannot be delayed.”

Joe was nodding along as he absorbed the new information. He felt oddly disappointed, as though he had been speeding through the last few pages of an exciting novel, only to reach the last page and find it missing. But what had he been expecting? Had he expected Le Chiffre to make him stay, remain as his hostage? He worked his lip between his teeth. He certainly hadn’t expected an all-expenses paid trip to anywhere he wished at the end of this particular ordeal. 

“I should go home,” he said at last, and Le Chiffre nodded his head, just once, and without enthusiasm.

“That is a viable option,” Le Chiffre said. “Another option, however, is that you remain in my company when we reach Paris.”

There was the last page Joe had been missing, and it made his heart race. “What sort of option is that?” Joe asked, his voice thick with curiosity.

Le Chiffre spread a wide palm across the crease of his pressed trousers, his long fingers fanning idly over the soft fabric. “An option of companionship, I suppose,” said Le Chiffre. “To an extent.” Then, “Have you been to Paris, Mr. Connor?”

Joe nodded dazedly, still unsure of the conversation he had been drawn into, and the word ‘companionship’ was echoing brightly in his mind. “I spent a few summers there when I was young,” he said. “My father lived there.” Before he died, he did not add. 

“I expect to be quite busy in Paris, but in my down time, I would not object to your presence,” said Le Chiffre. “And I thought, perhaps, some quiet time to relax, without the pressure of family, might do you well.”

Joe was still nodding. He couldn’t seem to stop.

“And so I extend my invitation, Mr. Connor,” continued Le Chiffre, kindly ignoring the stupefied look plastered to Joe’s face to fuss with his lapels. “You may leave with the driver, or you may leave with me. The choice is entirely yours.”

After a period of silence, Joe realized Le Chiffre had stopped talking and was waiting, waiting for Joe’s answer. 

Joe couldn’t think straight, no surprise there, and his mind kept flashing back to Odysseus trying to make his way home to Ithaca. Joe sighed and ran his hand over his face roughly. The thing was, Joe didn’t especially want to return to Ithaca. He certainly had no Penelope waiting for him, unless his mother counted, but he could just ring her again, couldn’t he? And how long would Le Chiffre even be in Paris? Not for forever, surely. It wasn’t like this trip would last forever. 

“I should go home,” Joe told Le Chiffre suddenly. 

Le Chiffre did not look disappointed or disheartened or anything at all. His face was blank.

“But I think I’ll go with you instead,” Joe finished, blue eyes flashing mischievously.

And that, to Joe’s delight, brought a pleased smile to the banker’s lips.


	5. Chapter 5

Paris in April.

Joe stepped from the plane, following Le Chiffre down the metal staircase, and inhaled the fresh air. For almost a year he had been in Africa for his teaching stint in the Rwandan town. He had not imagined it would end this way, being whisked away from the heart of a genocide by a man who had, essentially, kidnapped him. 

Though ‘kidnapped’ just didn’t seem to fit the reality, Joe mused, walking quickly to keep up with the long-legged Le Chiffre. He was leading them to a white stretch limousine, one of two, which were waiting for them a few yards away on the carport. Joe wondered if other kidnappers brought their hostages to the most romantic city in the world. But then, he reminded himself as a chauffer held the door open for them, he wasn’t a hostage. Or, if he was, it was by choice, which was nonsensical. Absurd. 

Joe dipped his head to enter the limo, and found his way impeded by a hand on his shoulder. 

“Mr. Connor,” Le Chiffre said, and Joe straightened and turned to face him. A swift Parisian breeze undid the man’s carefully slicked hair, and it fell in disobedience over his forehead. “Are you certain you wish to accompany me?” he asked. “The other limousine is waiting for your orders to take you wherever you please.”

Joe eyed the second limo for a moment before looking back at Le Chiffre, who was watching him carefully. “I think,” Joe said, wetting his lips anxiously with the tip of his tongue, “that Paris will please me.”

Le Chiffre tilted his head and appraised the teacher’s confidence with a small smirk, and then he motioned toward their limo with a graceful sweep of his hand. “Then by all means,” he said. “After you, Mr. Connor.”

They entered the limo, sliding over the white leather seats. The interior was, to put it mildly, spacious, and Joe looked about his surroundings, slack jawed. 

“I’ve never ridden in a limousine before,” he said by way of explanation when he caught Le Chiffre smiling curiously at him. “I didn’t think they were so…big.”

“Well, mine is bigger than most,” was Le Chiffre’s answer, and Joe felt the familiar rush of blood to his cheeks. Just his cheeks, thank god. “Are you thirsty?” Le Chiffre asked, gesturing to a cabinet beneath the tinted windows. “You’ll find it fully stocked.”

“Should I be worried about accepting the drinks you offer me from now on?” Joe asked abruptly, and to his chagrin, his tone came out far more playful than he’d intended, and Le Chiffre merely smiled. He had meant to sound irritated, because he was slightly irritated now that he thought about it. The man had drugged him and dragged him on a plane without his permission. Joe knew, at least, that he should feel irritation over it. Why, then, did he sound like a flirtatious schoolboy? He cleared his throat and made a second attempt.

“What I meant, Le Chiffre,” Joe began, the name he’d so seldom used rolling pleasantly off his tongue, “is should I be concerned you will drug me again without my permission?”

That made Le Chiffre frown, and Joe saw his hand slipping into his jacket pocket, where he seemed to be touching something. “Do you believe a situation may arise wherein I might give you drugs with your permission, Mr. Connor?” Le Chiffre asked him. Joe had no answer for that, and so Le Chiffre went on. “I slipped a relaxant into your whiskey, because, for the third time within a very short time span, you were suffering, what I deemed to be, a severe panic attack.”

A thought occurred to Joe, and he voiced it. “Do you have much experience with panic attacks, then?” His eyes darted to the hand hidden away within Le Chiffre’s pocket. At the same time, the limo began to pull away from the lot, and Joe saw the dim view through the window rush by as they left the airport. 

“You seem to be feeling more energized,” Le Chiffre said, and Joe blinked at the sudden turn of topic.

“Blame the European air,” Joe said.

“I will thank it, not blame it,” Le Chiffre countered. “You have a new brightness to your eyes.”

Joe bit at his lip and turned away to look out his blackened window. The overhead light of the limousine was revealingly bright, and he knew Le Chiffre had caught his scarlet blush, not that he wasn’t used to it by now. 

“I do not wish to discomfit you, Mr. Connor,” Le Chiffre said. “And before we continue on, I would like for you to look at me so I can speak to you properly, please.”

That was not what Joe had expected, and so he turned in his seat to face Le Chiffre, feeling thoroughly reprimanded. How his students must have felt when he – no, he wouldn’t think about them. He concentrated fully on the man beside him. “Well?” he asked.

“I would like to make something clear to you,” Le Chiffre said. He waited for Joe to nod before he proceeded. “I medicated you, because you needed it, the same way I tended to your hand, because you needed it. If your health is compromised, and I can help you, I will help. Will this be an issue during our time together here?” Le Chiffre’s voice was utterly calm, completely casual. He was not bossing, he was merely relaying facts, and Joe found himself irrepressibly amused.

“Are you going to threaten to turn the limo around?” he asked. Le Chiffre stared at him, his lovely mouth thinned and staid. Joe held out his hands in a helpless shrug. “You have done nothing but help me since I met you,” Joe said. “I have no idea why.”

It was Le Chiffre’s turn to look away now, his hand receding from his pocket and rising to his lips, where Joe heard a little puff of air and a sharp inhale. He caught a flash of silver as Le Chiffre’s hand returned the hidden item to his pocket and looked, not straight back at Joe, but straight ahead. 

“Oh. Do you have asthma?” Joe asked in disbelief. Why it was disbelief he couldn’t quite say. Perhaps because the statuesque man, up until that very moment, had presented himself as impenetrable, invulnerable. And for some unbeknownst reason, the idea of a squirreled away inhaler in Le Chiffre’s silk-lined pocket brought an inexplicable joy to Joe. 

“So it will not be an issue?” Le Chiffre asked, eyes still straight ahead. 

Joe furrowed his brow at the subject switch and had to rewind their conversation to understand. “Will it be an issue that you want to help me if I’m unwell?” he asked. He watched Le Chiffre’s fine profile as he nodded assent. “No. I don’t imagine it will be an issue.”

“Excellent,” Le Chiffre said, and then he did look at Joe, eyes glinting maroon and milky white. “And now for an extremely important question, Mr. Connor.”

Joe swallowed, not knowing what to expect. “W-w-what?” he stammered awkwardly.

Le Chiffre leaned toward him conspiratorially and whispered, “Do you like escargot?” 

 

Joe did not. He definitely, definitely did not.

“Oh, it’s awful!” he said after he’d spat the rubbery snail back into his napkin. Joe looked up across the table at Le Chiffre and smiled apologetically. “Sorry,” he said, but to his surprise, Le Chiffre just laughed, and it was as light and whimsical as the evening breeze.

“It’s not for everyone. Hence the steak,” Le Chiffre said, pulling the silver top off the platter. 

They were dining in the restaurant beneath the hotel where Le Chiffre had booked their room. ‘We should eat close to home this evening,’ Le Chiffre had said in the limo. ‘You will be tired after, and it is not my desire to drag you all over Paris. Not tonight.’

Le Chiffre had even suggested room service, but Joe insisted on the restaurant, though he’d kept his real motives to himself. It wasn’t the freshness of their patio table that had inclined him, but the need to keep away from Le Chiffre in a hotel room for as long as possible. He had been alone with him before in a bedroom, yes, and they had even shared a bed, but a hotel room was different. It had that something about it, an illicitness that upped the tempo of Joe’s heart. The last thing he needed was a hotel room with Le Chiffre, considering his track record of, putting it politely, overexcitement. 

He was still extremely mindful of his lack of briefs. 

Of course, when they finished their dinner and took the elevator to the room, Joe realized his fallacy. Eventually.

Le Chiffre arched a brow after he had opened the door and Joe entered past him. He had only his backpack, and he set it carefully down on the plush carpet, and then sat on the edge of the bed. Le Chiffre wore a strange expression. 

“This room is to your liking?” Le Chiffre asked him, and Joe shrugged his shoulders, licking his lips self-consciously.

“Ah,” said Le Chiffre. “Then I will take the other room. Excuse me a moment,” he said, and then he had retreated, clicking the door shut behind him. 

And that was when the obvious slapped Joe across the face. Hard. Le Chiffre had purchased two separate rooms. 

One for each of them. 

Why, oh why, had Joe assumed they would be sharing a single room? With one bed?

“Oh god,” Joe mumbled, smacking his hand over his forehead and smoothing it over his stupid, stupid face. 

Then there was a knock on the door. Quick and polite. Joe stood and dragged himself to the door, opened it. Le Chiffre stood there with a smile. He had set his own bags in the other room.  
“The rooms are adjoining,” Le Chiffre informed him as he stepped inside. 

Joe noticed the quite obvious door that would connect their rooms. “I’m not having my most observant day ever,” Joe said. 

“Hardly a punishable offense, Mr. Connor,” Le Chiffre said, walking casually to Joe’s window. He had to walk a long distance; the room was very large. “Besides, I am extremely observant,” he said, pushing the heavy curtains to the side and revealing a breathtaking cityscape. 

“Are you saying you can be observant enough for the both of us?” Joe asked as he joined Le Chiffre at the window. “It’s beautiful,” he said, and he meant it. Evening had fallen while they had dined, and the lights of the city sparkled.

“If you need me to be observant for the both of us, I will be,” Le Chiffre said quietly at Joe’s side. Then, “It is beautiful. Tomorrow, if you’ll allow me, I will take you out amongst those lights.”

Joe flushed freely, confident that Le Chiffre couldn’t see in the dim light of the hotel room. He also wondered, with a tad of worry, how observant Le Chiffre actually was. Hopefully not observant enough to notice the rapidity of Joe’s breathing as he considered the prospects of Le Chiffre taking him out, and what that would entail. 

“You should rest,” Le Chiffre said, turning from the view to look at Joe instead. Joe looked back. Le Chiffre’s face was alight with the colorful city glow. 

“I should do a great many things, I fear,’ Joe said. “Bathe, for one. Maybe a bath this time, though. I’d hate to run up the bill with more broken shower doors.”

“A bath is a good idea,” Le Chiffre agreed, and Joe was struck with a dread that he was somehow malodorous, but Le Chiffre read his expression and added, “It will help relax you before you sleep.”

Joe grinned sheepishly. “Right,” he said. 

“Might I draw it up for you?” Le Chiffre asked, already sauntering towards the bathroom door. Joe stared after him, his slim figure cutting a handsome silhouette in the darkening hotel room. When Joe moved to follow him, he switched on the bedside lamp to help diminish the mood lighting that had begun to infiltrate the room. It emitted a soft, warm, golden light. Like candlelight. Joe sighed at his failure and entered the bathroom. 

Le Chiffre was bent over the tub, which was enormous, luxurious, and claw-footed. He had removed his suit jacket and pushed up his sleeve, and there was that forearm again, unassumingly glorious, as he ran his hand under the faucet, testing the temperature of the water. Joe came to stand beside him. 

“I can do that,” he offered. 

“Allow me,” Le Chiffre said. So Joe allowed it. 

He re-entered the bedroom to avoid the awkwardness of hovering, and sat on the bed. He bounced on it with a sleepy smile. It was incredibly soft, and he was enveloped by the idea of how nice it would be to snuggle beneath the heavy comforter and sink his head into the downy pillows and sleep soundly. 

He hoped he would sleep soundly. Joe lay back on the bed. He would just relax until Le Chiffre had finished filling the tub, and then he would get up. 

“Mr. Connor?” came a whisper at Joe’s ear, and his eyes flew open. Le Chiffre stood above him. “I’m sorry, I didn't know if I should wake you.”

Joe rubbed his eyes and lifted himself up on his hands, feeling foolish. “It’s okay. I didn’t mean to nod off so quickly.”

“Your bath is ready, if you still wish to use it,” Le Chiffre said. “Though you might prefer to sleep, while the moment lasts.”

Le Chiffre spoke as though he knew how fleeting those moments of sleep really were, and Joe remembered his confession the night before, that he often had trouble sleeping. Joe wondered if Le Chiffre’s insomnia had any connection to his knowledge of panic attacks. Or if either correlated to his damaged left eye. 

“I’ll take the bath,” Joe said, standing. “And what will you do?” he asked, feeling the red creeping into his cheeks.

“I would like to take a bath, as well,” Le Chiffre said, and Joe nearly swallowed his tongue before Le Chiffre continued innocently, “But I have work that requires my attention tonight. It’s no bother. My own bathtub awaits me when I return.”

“Your own tub, of course,” Joe said with a nervous burst of laughter, and Le Chiffre raised his pale eyebrows. “I mean,” Joe said hurriedly, hoping this wasn’t one of Le Chiffre’s moments of super observant-ness, “when you return? Where are you going?” 

“Out, briefly,” Le Chiffre said as he slipped his suit jacket back over his shoulders. He straightened his tie. 

Out. Briefly. Joe sighed, knowing that would be the most information he would receive. 

“Oh, okay,” he said. He thought of his hot bath and the big bed. He thought of Le Chiffre sitting next to him and reading him to sleep, a silly thought, and he shook it from his head. “Well.”

“I should not be gone too long, Mr. Connor,” Le Chiffre told him. “Take your bath. Ease your muscles. Try to ease your mind. And then sleep.” He smiled small, and then turned to leave. 

Joe’s hand flexed at his side. It was surprising, his impulse to reach out and grab Le Chiffre’s arm. He didn’t do it; he just flexed his hand. 

Le Chiffre turned at the door on his way out. “Shall I check in on you when I return?”

“Yes, please,” Joe answered, much too quickly, much too loudly. 

“Alright,” Le Chiffre said. “Enjoy your bath.” And then the door was closing, and he was gone. 

And Joe was alone in the poshest hotel room he’d ever been in. He strolled into the bathroom and observed the tub, which Le Chiffre had filled with steamy hot water. It smelled faintly of jasmine, he thought, as he dipped a finger beneath the surface. Had Le Chiffre perfumed his bath while he’d been dozing? No matter. Joe liked jasmine. 

He slid his hands into the waistband of his slacks, Le Chiffre’s slacks, he reminded himself, and let them fall away so he remained only in the crisp white shirt. That, he unbuttoned slowly. His damaged hand was in some pain as he worked open the shirt. It was currently un-bandaged. Le Chiffre had recommended that it have time to breathe, and Joe wondered if he should let it sink beneath the hot bathwater. 

Every button undone, Joe freed himself of the last stitch of clothing, and then he bent to pick up the trousers from the floor. He folded both articles and set them atop the toilet, letting his fingers linger over the fine fabric. Then he stepped into his bath. 

It was hotter than he would have made it, and he had to lower himself into it slowly. But finally, he sank into a completely relaxed position, head propped against a spa-white bath cushion and feet stretching the whole length, so that his toes peeked out of the water and prodded at the opposite end’s faucet. 

Joe sighed, willing away the stress in his shoulders and back. He soaked in the tub until he grew lightheaded, and then he opened the drain and let cool water run while he quickly shampooed his hair and lathered his body in foamy, ivory soap suds. He did this mostly one-handed; the soap made his cuts sting. 

He left the bath feeling boneless and content, wrapping himself in a fluffy towel, his naked feet padding damply against the tile and then on the carpet as he trudged into the bedroom. His pack awaited him on the floor by the bed, and his eyes roamed over it, wary. 

In his maddened haste to leave the school, he had packed the framed photograph of his mother, his books, and journal. Joe’s clothes were not in his pack, but in the borrowed chest of drawers he’d been provided upon his arrival. He had left them. T-shirts and khaki pants and torn jeans had not seemed important enough to make the cut as he’d packed for his life. Joe had thought that by the time he needed to change his clothes, he would be home, not in a hotel room in Paris. 

His eyes strayed to the door that connected his room with Le Chiffre’s. He walked to it and tested the handle. It was, as he’d suspected and hoped, unlocked. With only the barest of hesitations, he pushed it open and crossed the threshold into Le Chiffre’s temporary housing.

It seemed he had already taken the time to unpack a few of his belongings. He must have done it in the short time before he’d rejoined Joe in his own room. The Odyssey was angled on the bedside table, and his suitcase was opened and empty on the bed. Joe glanced around and found the closet. It was left ajar, and he could make out the row of suits hanging on the rod in its shadowy depths. He took the few steps to reach it, and pulled the door wide, peering inside at the lineup of Le Chiffre’s black suits. Joe brought his hand up to softly trace along the shoulders and sleeves, until he felt a standalone softness beneath his skin. His fingers closed on the shirt, and he pulled it from its hook. It was still very much Le Chiffre, button down conservative and elegant, but it was more worn than the others, and its black shade, Joe thought after a careful inspection under the bedside lamplight, was not quite as black as the other shirts. He guessed it was the oldest and least expensive among his options, and so he slipped it on, letting it replace the fluffy towel, which he folded and set aside. 

Joe stood in Le Chiffre’s hotel room, draped in le Chiffre’s shirt, which was a touch too long and fell just above the halfway point on Joe’s thighs. Now all he needed was underwear. Le Chiffre had been generous enough with everything else, certainly he wouldn’t mind a borrowed pair of boxers or briefs or…whatever Le Chiffre fancied for smallclothes. He found his answer in the dresser and grinned. Black briefs, comfortably snug, and to Joe’s utter enjoyment, cotton. Not silk. Soft, 100% cotton briefs. 

He snapped the elastic against his hip, buttoned one button of the shirt, and plopped himself down on the bed. Joe had a thought in the back of his head warning him to go back to his own room, that it was rude to sprawl on Le Chiffre’s bed and flip idly through his book. But Joe was lazy and drained from the hot bath, and so he sprawled and flipped, and did not worry too much when his eyelids grew heavy. 

 

The hour was late when Joe heard the door shut, and Joe jolted promptly awake. He opened his eyes and saw Le Chiffre moving by the doorway. For a loopy, sleepy moment, Joe thought how nice it was that Le Chiffre had come to check on him after his business was finished, like he’d promised, and then he remembered. He was in Le Chiffre’s room, sleeping in his bed. Sometime during the night, he’d even burrowed beneath the covers. Le Chiffre had walked into his own hotel room, and there Joe was, uninvited. 

Joe was mortified and sat up slowly in the bed, as if Le Chiffre was an apex predator, a t-rex, and if Joe was very still, he wouldn’t be spotted. Could he manage to walk slowly back to his room without Le Chiffre noticing? 

“Mr. Connor,” Le Chiffre said.

Nope. 

“Hello,” Joe said casually, pretending as though he weren’t half dressed in the man’s bed. 

“No need to get up,” Le Chiffre told him, and he turned to the open closet to hang up his jacket. “Go back to sleep.”

But Joe was already removing himself from the covers and sliding from the bed. “I came in here to, erm, borrow something, and I must have fallen asleep. Sorry. I’ll just go back to my room now.”  
He passed Le Chiffre as he was loosening his tie, and stopped to watch him slip it from around his neck and hang it on the closet hook. Le Chiffre turned his head to take Joe in, eyes assessing his ‘borrowed somethings’ with a cool twitch of his lips. At that angle, Joe could make out Le Chiffre’s face in the soft glow of the lamp. Something made him squint and step closer. 

“May I help you, Mr. Connor?” Le Chiffre asked, leaning ever so slightly away from the approaching teacher. 

Joe lifted his hand to a dark smudge beneath Le Chiffre’s cheekbone. His finger touched there softly, slowly, and Le Chiffre tensed beneath the contact like a coiled snake in high grass, his eyes boring into Joe. When Joe brought his finger back, he looked at the darkness coating it. 

“Are you hurt?” Joe asked with surprise, for it was blood on his skin and blood on Le Chiffre’s face.

Le Chiffre moved away from Joe, several steps away, giving him his back as he busied with the laces of his shoes. “I am fine, I assure you. Go to bed,” he said, and his voice was oddly terse. 

Joe took another step toward him. “You’re bleeding,” he said. “Let me see.”

Le Chiffre straightened his back in a snap and whipped around to face Joe. His face was dramatically shadowed in the lamplight. “It’s not my blood, and it’s not your concern,” he said with a sneer that made Joe stumble back. “Go to bed, Mr. Connor.”

“Fine,” Joe said quietly, and he walked through their shared door to his own room, shutting it harder behind him than he should have, being a mature adult. 

He didn’t go straight to bed, but waited by the door, pressing his ear to it. He could make out faint sounds of Le Chiffre moving about the room, the bathroom sink, the scrubbing of a toothbrush, the muffled roar of the shower (not tub), and finally, after a long time, the squeak of the bed as Le Chiffre settled into it. When Joe heard the click of the bedside lamp, he stopped his eavesdropping and returned to his own bed, cold and unused. He forced his eyes shut and hoped for sleep to reclaim him. 

But it was fruitless. The moment had passed.


	6. Chapter 6

Joe had a stack of bibles in his arms and a lump in his throat. His bright blue eyes found Christopher, who was approaching the pulpit, the large white crucifix nailed to the wall behind him like a cruel punctuation point. The leather-bound books were passed from Joe’s shaking hands to the hands of his friends. They thanked him wordlessly, clutching the holy pages to their chests. 

When his hands were empty, the stack of bibles gone, Joe went to stand beside Christopher at the front of the church. Christopher touched his shoulder as he neared, and Joe fought the tears in his eyes, forbidding them to fall. He was angry. He was so angry, his muscles trembled. 

He turned to face the crowd, and it was a true crowd, for the room was as filled as it had ever been. Never had so many people attended one of Christopher’s services, but now they all seemed to be there, crammed and hot and desperate. They all wanted to be blessed before the gates were opened. They wanted to be saved before they died.

It was the only comfort Christopher could provide, but Joe couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t look into the eyes of the little children, the eyes of his students and their parents. The families that, within the hour, maybe less than that, would be slaughtered by madmen with machetes and machine guns. He grasped Christopher’s robes as he passed, a gentle, loving touch, and kept his eyes glued to the floor as he fled the house of worship.

Joe could hear them chanting past the high gates, thumping their drums and singing. Teasing. Jeering. Waiting. He walked straight for his little room and began to pack his bag. He felt heat at his sandaled foot and looked down. It was a puddle streaming from beneath his bed. He bent down to see where it was coming from and realized it was red. Blood. It rose quickly, covering his foot, moving up his legs. Soon it was to his waist, and all Joe could do was stand there in it, wading in the blood. Something nudged at his back, and he turned. Behind him, a head bobbed to the surface, and it floated toward him. Marie’s head, pushing against him, her dead eyes wide and petrified. 

Joe screamed and threw himself back, slipping on the slick floor and plunging beneath the bloody water. It filled his mouth, and he knew he was going to drown, but he couldn’t stop screaming.  
Suddenly, a hand gripped his wrist and yanked. Joe breached the surface of blood, covered in it from head to toe, and felt himself cradled against a warm, strong chest. 

“Mr. Connor?” a sweetly accented voice asked, and Joe tipped back his head to see his rescuer. Le Chiffre was holding him in his classroom now, and the flood of blood was gone. 

“Le Chiffre, what are you doing here?” Joe asked, gazing into his eyes. 

Le Chiffre didn’t answer, only leaned Joe back until his legs hit the edge of his desk. 

“I’ll spill my coffee,” Joe protested, reaching an arm back to steady himself. 

Le Chiffre was wrapping an arm around the small of his back and nuzzling Joe’s throat. “It’s tea,” he said. 

“Oh, good,” Joe answered and then he was kissing Le Chiffre. 

The man pressed him into the desk, forcing their bodies flush from groin to lips, where he kissed him with a fervency that pulled a groan from Joe’s chest. Le Chiffre’s mouth was hot and demanding and Joe parted his lips with a sigh and slipped his tongue to trace sharp teeth. He tasted blood and whiskey. 

Le Chiffre’s hands ran all over his body, fingertips bruising the soft flesh of his thighs as they ground against each other. Joe heard a clatter and they both looked to the floor, where the mug had fallen from the desk, shattering and spilling dark liquid all over the floor. 

“Oh no,” Joe said. It was the saddest thing he had ever seen. 

He felt Le Chiffre’s breath hot at his neck. “I’ll help you clean it up.”

Joe shook his head and grabbed Le Chiffre’s hand, bringing it between them to cup his hardness. “Help me with this instead,” he demanded breathlessly.

And then he woke up. 

A car alarm was blaring from the street. Joe lay panting in the hotel bed, his hands shoved into the black briefs, holding himself. He was desperately hard. And mortified. 

Slowly, he eased his grip, and removed his hand. A searing pain made him hiss, and he sat up in the bed, holding his hand up to his face. He had torn open a few of the gashes. There was blood on the sheets and on his flushed, sweat-damp body.

“Oh no,” Joe said, and the words echoed from the dream, and he thought of Le Chiffre kissing him and grinding his hips, and…he needed to take a shower. Cold. Punishing. He threw the ruined sheets and covers from the bed and stood. That’s when he saw the note pressed to his pillow. 

He picked it up and examined the looping cursive. 

‘Mr. Connor ,’ it read. ‘Business has called me away early this morning. Please help yourself to anything you may require from my room. I believe you know where my clothes are kept. There is an envelope for you on my nightstand, with an address you might find useful.’ His name was scrawled beneath: Le Chiffre. 

Joe set the note aside and went to the shower, turning the nozzle to cold. Frigidly cold. It’s what he needed. Without thought to his last shower, he stepped in and let the icy spray hit his face. It was so cold he gasped. He shivered beneath it, scrubbing at the traces of blood his hand had left on his softening body. Joe tried not to reflect on the dream. He knew what drowning in pools of blood meant without having to whip out his Psychology 101 knowhow. The bit with the banker was a little more confusing, he thought, and he decided not to overanalyze that section either. Instead, he focused on his washing, and on the goose bumps rising over his skin from the water, and on the note sitting on his pillow. 

It was a much more successful shower than his last, even though there was still some blood involved, but definitely less than before. And there was some shaking, like before, but at least he was shaking now from a lowered temperature instead of horrific flashbacks. Definitely a success, by Joe’s standards anyway. He was in an out in minutes, and returning to the note with a towel wrapped around his waist. 

Le Chiffre wanted him to peruse his closet for more clothes, did he? And he had left an envelope? His interest peaked, Joe opened the adjoining door and entered the other man’s room. The bed was unsurprisingly made up. He walked to the nightstand and found the envelope with his name written in the same looping letters as the note on his pillow. Joe froze from epiphany. Le Chiffre had walked into his bedroom sometime during the early morning and left the note for him, which meant he had approached the bed. Had he seen or heard anything strange, vocal expressions of Joe’s nightmare turned sex dream? Had he walked in and seen Joe writhing in the sheets with his hands in his briefs? Le Chiffre’s briefs?

“I need a cup of coffee,” Joe said to himself, dropping to sit on the chair with the envelope in his hand. He would have to assume that Le Chiffre hadn’t been subjected to a free, and most likely unwanted, show that morning. He couldn’t fret over it, and besides, there was a thickly stuffed envelope with his name on it, and Joe wanted to see what was inside. 

It was cash, a stack of bills, French fare. And a scrap of torn notebook paper with an address scribbled on it, as well as a quickly penned script beneath that read: Give this to the driver.

It felt like the beginning of a scavenger hunt, and Joe’s lips twisted into the wasteland between smile and frown. Le Chiffre had blood on his face when he’d returned last night, and when Joe had questioned him, he’d said it wasn’t his. So whose was it? The cash in the envelope, where had it come from? More troubling than all of it, however, was that Joe didn’t really care. He took some of the money out for his wallet and stuffed the rest of it deep in his rucksack. Then he returned to Le Chiffre’s closet to dress. 

There was a shirt and trousers hanging together on the rod, yet pushed away from the collection of immaculate black suits. Le Chiffre, it appeared, had set them aside for Joe’s consideration. He fingered the light blue cloth of the shirt. It was soft. He pulled it from the hanger and held it up to his chest. It would match his eyes. 

Joe helped himself to a fresh pair of briefs and tried the pants, a rich, coffee brown. Then he put on the shirt. Everything fit well enough, but he still cringed when he caught his reflection in the full length mirror hiding behind the closet door. He looked sickly pale and the skin beneath his eyes was dark. 

His hair was wet from the shower, and a drip of water ran the length of his face. He dried it with his cast aside towel, shoved the scrap of paper with the address into his trouser pocket, and left Le Chiffre’s room for his own, not bothering to shut the door between them. 

On his return, Joe’s glance happened upon the roll of medical gauze and antiseptic cream that Le Chiffre had obviously left for him on his nightstand. Useful, since Joe had managed to open up his cuts in the most humiliating way imaginable. He spread the cream and wrapped his hand as best he could, then put his wallet in his pocket. 

And then Joe was out of things to do. And he still needed coffee. He did not think about the way Le Chiffre had whispered against his neck that it was tea, not coffee. He didn’t think about the kissing that had followed. But he did leave the hotel room. He had an address to find. 

 

The driver mentioned in Le Chiffre’s note was waiting for him outside the hotel lobby, and he grinned brightly at Joe as he walked up to the limousine. 

“Good afternoon, Mr. Connor,” he said, and Joe judged his accent to be Russian, and only a little difficult to understand.

“Hello,” Joe said. “Is it afternoon already?” The hotel room had no clock, and Joe had not checked his watch. But it was not outside the realm of possibility that he’d slept past noon, not with the leftover drugs in his system and the wheel of perpetual stress he had been spinning in. 

“It’s two o’clock, Mr. Connor,” the chauffer told him. His teeth were impeccably straight. “Le Chiffre instructed me to inform you that it was quite appropriate for you to sleep in, sir, and that you should not feel guilty after your recent hardships.”

“Oh, um, thank you,” Joe said. “Le Chiffre instructed me, as well, actually,” he said as he fished the scrap of note from his pocket. “He told me to give you this.” He handed the address to the chauffer.

“Of course, Mr. Connor,” he said, and then he opened the door for Joe with a gloved hand and courteous bow, which had Joe blushing on the sidewalk. 

“Thank you – erm – I didn’t catch your name?”

“Mr. Driver, sir,” answered the chauffer with an un-ironic smile. 

Joe cocked his head in confusion for a moment before returning the smile to his driver named Mr. Driver, and then he ducked into the limo and took his place on the wide, leather seat cushion. 

Mr. Driver shut the door, started the vehicle, and then they were off to the mysterious address via Le Chiffre’s instruction. 

Joe was not in the limousine long before it parked alongside a lane of boutiques, and a nervous fluttering found its way into the pit of the humble teacher’s stomach. 

Mr. Driver marched around to the door, and opened it for Joe, offering his gloved hand for the taking. Joe took it awkwardly and let the chauffer help him from the vehicle. 

“Is this it?” Joe asked, his eyes aloft to the bold red lettering of the closest shop door. 

“Yes, Mr. Connor,” said the chauffer, and without further cordiality, he walked back to the driver’s door and re-staked his claim in front of the steering wheel. With a little wave of farewell to Joe, he pulled out from the parking lane and zipped down the road, leaving Joe to stand solitarily before the looming boutique. 

Joe took a deep breath, looked left, right, and then headed in with his chin lifted in some semblance of calm. The pathetically put-upon demeanor evaporated as soon as his feet hit the stained oak floors, polished so clean Joe could see his wretched reflection in them. 

“Mr. Connor?” a pixie-ish woman with ginger hair said, zeroing in on him from clear across the shop. 

Joe cleared his throat in the interim, and then she was there in front of him, big green eyes batting false curled lashes at him. Her lipstick was either the deepest shade of red he’d ever seen or black. He couldn’t tell. 

“Are you Mr. Connor?” she asked him again, her voice a sweet French melody. 

“I am he,” Joe answered slowly, and she approved of his answer with a curt nod and small-boned hand snaring his elbow. Then he was being escorted, with surprising force, through a whirlwind of scarves and paisley ties and garters, colors and swatches blurring before his eyes, and before he knew it, he was standing back on the sidewalk, his arms heavy with the weight of four shop parcels. He wasn’t sure what had just happened, but he was absolutely sure he had been coerced into buying silky red boxer shorts, which he wore now beneath his new corduroy pants. 

Joe had just resigned himself to the fact that he was about to collapse to the sidewalk, buried beneath an insurmountable pile of sweater vests and penny loafers, when the familiar limousine pulled up in front of him. He laughed in relief when Mr. Driver came around to take his bags with a straight-toothed grin and open the door for him. Joe threw himself exhaustedly into the limo and yelled when he landed halfway in Le Chiffre’s lap.

“Hello, Mr. Connor,” Le Chiffre said amiably, and Joe nearly wrenched himself in two in his scramble to move away. 

When he was safely and assuredly no longer in Le Chiffre’s lap, Joe responded in a far too breathless voice, “Hello, Le Chiffre.” 

The man was sitting with his legs casually crossed and his hands folded in his lap. “Did you have a nice afternoon?” Le Chiffre asked. 

Joe scratched his head thoughtfully. His hair had air-dried into a curly mess. “To be honest, I’m a bit fuzzy on the last few hours of my life. I think there was a tape measure involved at some point,” he said, “and very cold hands.” He was determinedly not looking at Le Chiffre, pretending to care about the state of his hand bandage instead. 

“You found clothes to your liking?”

“If you’re asking if I spent an obscene amount of money, yes, Le Chiffre. And I am now the owner of suspenders, something I doubted I would ever be able to say about myself.” Joe was sure Le Chiffre was staring at him, but he didn’t dare glance up from his hands to verify. He knew his face was plagued by blush, because he was thinking of his dream suddenly, and the image of Le Chiffre rutting against him could not be vanquished. It was as demanding of Joe’s attention as the Le Chiffre beside him was. The Le Chiffre beside him who was moving across the seat to be even closer beside him. 

“May I see your hand?” Le Chiffre asked, and he held out his own expectantly. 

“I had to bandage it myself,” Joe said as he complied, placing his hand gently in Le Chiffre’s. 

“I see,” said Le Chiffre, his fingers skimming over the wrappings. “Did your cuts reopen?” 

Joe bit at his lip and drew his hand back self-consciously. “In my sleep, yeah. Just a bit.”

Le Chiffre didn’t look insulted at the withdrawal of Joe’s hand, but he did wear a concerned scowl as he responded. “I will tend to it when we return to the hotel. I would save you from weathering scars if I could.” 

An odd lilt in Le Chiffre’s voice made Joe look at him in question. “I don’t mind a few scars,” Joe said, not hiding the path of his gaze as he found the scars over Le Chiffre’s eye. “My mum always said they add character, and I’m wont to agree.”

“All the same,” Le Chiffre said. 

“You didn’t have to buy me all of those clothes, you know,” Joe said after a peculiar silence. 

“And risk you bleeding all over my own?” Le Chiffre asked, and Joe was taken aback in the brief moment it took for Le Chiffre’s mouth to break into a crooked smile. “Forgive me my indulgences, Mr. Connor. I only wanted you to feel comfortable in clothes of your own during your stay in Paris.”

They were still sitting close together on the seat since Le Chiffre had scooted to assess Joe’s hand, but they were not presently touching. Joe was extremely aware of all the places they were not touching. He swallowed. “Comfortable for me usually involves jeans with holes in the knee.”

“We’ve only just arrived, Mr. Connor,” said Le Chiffre. “You may earn holes in your knees yet.” Joe proceeded to suffer through a mild aneurism as Le Chiffre carried on with an insufferably casual air. “If you aren’t too tired, I thought we might forego the hotel for a spell.”

“I slept until two in the afternoon,” Joe managed to sputter. “I should be good for a while.”

“But you did not fall asleep until nearly four in the morning,” Le Chiffre argued indifferently. 

“How do you know what time I fell asleep?” Joe asked. 

“I told you,” said Le Chiffre, looking at Joe with an all-knowing smile. “I am extremely observant.”

 

Mr. Driver dropped them at an iron gate, handing Le Chiffre a basket before he bowed his head and reported he would be waiting nearby when they were ready. 

“Thank you, Mr. Driver,” Le Chiffre said with a light grip on the basket handle, and then he was leading the way through the gate, and Joe found himself awash in flowers.

It was a garden, a hugely gorgeous garden sequestered away in a forgotten corner of Paris, and Joe was mesmerized. He turned in a circle, head up, taking in the blooms of blue and periwinkle and crimson, every color, every scent. Beneath his feet were cobbled stones of a winding path, and he walked the path slowly with Le Chiffre, speechless. 

At the end of the path was a clearing, a stone bench in its center, a weeping willow providing a vast shade. Joe looked at Le Chiffre curiously. 

“What is this?” he asked the man at his side.

“I told you I’d like to take you out amongst the lights,” Le Chiffre said, and he walked to the bench to take a seat.

Joe swept his eyes quickly about, wondering if he’d missed something pivotal, and then he said, “I don’t see any lights.”

Le Chiffre flicked his wrist out from beneath his shirt cuff and glanced at his watch. “Come sit,” he said, eyes casting back up to Joe’s. 

Hesitantly, Joe approached the man on the bench. He sat in the sparse space provided; the bench was cozier than it had seemed at first glance now that he was sharing it with Le Chiffre, whose presence alone took up the entire garden. Once seated, he placed his hands politely in his lap and stared straight ahead at a vine encroaching up the trunk of the willow, only looking askance at Le Chiffre when he heard a POP. 

Joe jumped at the sound, and fell to a crouch beside the bench, with his hands over his head.

“Mr. Connor,” Le Chiffre said, and Joe felt a hand on his back. 

Joe, eyes wide and teeth gritted, looked up at the man watching him. Le Chiffre had opened a bottle of champagne. He sighed heavily, and with as much dignity as he could gather, resumed his place on the bench. He was embarrassed. Le Chiffre made no mention of the reaction, only handed Joe a flute of pink, bubbly drink. 

Joe accepted, flustered and fighting the ridiculous notion that was attacking his senses. What, exactly, was happening? Why was he sitting in a garden, sipping champagne with Le Chiffre? He brought the rosy champagne to his lips and sipped it down. It was good, and he finished it quickly. Le Chiffre quirked his lip and poured more from the bottle before Joe thought to ask. 

“Thanks,” he said, and it took all his willpower not to finish the second glass as hastily as the first. His heart was racing from the startling popping of the cork he’d mistaken for a gunshot. “It’s a lovely garden,” he tried for conversation, and his voice sounded strained, stretched thin with tension. He knew Le Chiffre could hear it, too. 

“I discovered this garden a long time ago,” Le Chiffre said, his voice velvety smooth with all the calm Joe’s lacked. “It provided me with a comfort I hadn’t known I was in need of.”

Joe felt his eyebrows rise at that, and shot Le Chiffre an inquiring look. “A fan of flowers, are you?”

Le Chiffre sipped his own champagne. “As much as the next man,” he provided. “But it is the garden’s proximity to a greater passion that marked it as one of my favorite spots in Paris.”

As if planned down to the exact second, and Joe would think later that perhaps it had been, lights from behind the garden wall flooded their secluded clearing in a golden glow. Joe’s surprise brought him to his feet in a rush of nerves. Le Chiffre remained comfortably draped on the stone bench. 

“What is that?” Joe asked, and Le Chiffre smiled faintly and took another lazy sip of champagne.

A moment later, a sound permeated the air, a rising crescendo of string and brass and percussion. It seemed to send a vibration though the cobbled path and burrow beneath Joe’s skin. It was the tuning of an orchestra. 

“They are performing in the outdoor theatre nearby,” Le Chiffre said. “And from here, you can hear the music beautifully. I thought you might find it as relaxing as I do.”

Joe turned to him with a floored expression as the first notes of music began to drift through the garden. Tchaikovsky’s Valse Sentimentale. 

“You know it,” Le Chiffre stated, placing his hand on the bench beside him, a silent request that Joe obliged, almost floating through the evening air to take up his place beside Le Chiffre. 

“I do,” Joe answered simply when he’d settled on the bench. He finished his drink, and Le Chiffre refilled it again. Joe was familiar with the piece of music, very familiar. 

“I thought this might soothe you,” spoke Le Chiffre softly, his voice a welcome accompaniment to the swelling violin, “as it has so often soothed me.”

Joe let his eyes close, his long lashes falling in dark shadow over his cheeks. “Yes,” he said simply.

The music played on, and the teacher and the banker sat together on the bench, listening and drinking, and as night began to darken the sky, their section of garden remained lit with gold. 

And Joe was calm. 

And a little tipsy after the bottle of champagne was finished.

And a little drunk after the second bottle Le Chiffre had revealed from the basket was finished.

They stayed in the garden, in their secret orchestra box, for a long time, until Joe stood from the bench to stretch and found himself swaying on his feet, dizzy with drink. He didn’t worry that he would fall, however, because Le Chiffre was at his side in an instant, his hand lightly holding Joe’s elbow. 

“We should go now, I think,” Le Chiffre said, and Joe nodded his agreement, and the two men walked down the cobbled path, through the walls of flowers now majestic with moonlight. 

Mr. Driver was waiting for them when they exited the garden gate, the limousine door already open, but Joe turned to Le Chiffre with a drunken grin. 

“Can we walk?” he asked Le Chiffre. 

Le Chiffre considered him fondly, his fingers closing slightly tighter at his elbow, before nodding to the chauffer. “We will walk for a while, Mr. Driver,” he said. “But stay close by, please.”

“Yes, Le Chiffre, of course,” Mr. Driver said, and he pushed the door shut and went to sit behind the wheel. 

“Shall we find something to eat, Mr. Connor?” Le Chiffre asked him, walking him down the sidewalk with the gentle guidance of his hand. “I know a bistro nearby, if you’ve the mind.”

“I’ve the appetite,” Joe said with a laugh, and they continued down the street, the hum of the orchestra still filling the atmosphere with music that made Joe’s head swim peacefully. 

They had strolled a few blocks when they passed the shop front, the sort boasting a window filled with rows and rows of small television sets, all tuned to the same channel. In this case, it was a news channel. More specifically, the BBC. 

Joe spied the familiar logo from the corner of his eye and stopped. Le Chiffre took a few steps ahead before he realized he’d lost his companion, and then he turned to look at Joe, who was standing, stricken, hand to the glass. 

“Mr. Connor, are you well?” Le Chiffre asked. 

Joe did not hear him. His full attention was attuned to the grey scale TV set, on which his own face was plastered. 

There was Joe Connor, innocent teacher, handsome, volunteer Brit, fresh from University, standing on the side of a dusty road. The camera left his face and panned in around his feet, where a body was laying face-down, a gunshot wound in the back of its head. The earth was stained, and flies were beginning to swarm. The camera returned to the teacher’s face, and zoomed in. 

On the streets of Paris, Joe tore his eyes from the news reel, eyes blind to the man in front of him who was taking him by the shoulders and speaking to him in words he couldn’t understand. 

All he could see was the dusty road, the bodies crumpled and dead and reeking in the hot sun, and all he could hear was Rachel’s voice, directing the camera man and reassuring Joe that she’d seen much worse in Bosnia, and asking him if he was going to be sick. 

In another reality, Le Chiffre guided Joe into the alley next to the shop, where it was dark and cool, and he leaned Joe against the brick wall. Joe huffed in rapid, shallow breaths; his pupils were monstrous and black as pitch. He shook beneath Le Chiffre’s hands, which had moved from Joe’s shoulders to cup his face. 

“Mr. Connor,” Le Chiffre said, a deep and commanding tone that Joe could almost hear. “Mr. Connor, you are safe. You’re here with me.” Le Chiffre slid one hand down to press against Joe’s chest, to feel his heart pounding there. “Be here with me,” Le Chiffre said. “Be calm.”

Joe’s hands found their way inside Le Chiffre’s suit jacket, where they fisted the fabric of Le Chiffre’s shirt, pulling so roughly, he un-tucked the shirt completely. He fought for his breath as he clawed at Le Chiffre’s sides, out of his mind.

Le Chiffre wrapped his hand around the back of Joe’s neck and brought their faces close, so close his lips brushed against Joe’s stubble-roughened cheek. “Be here with me,” Le Chiffre whispered. 

Joe stilled in his arms. Then he gasped, trembling, and his lips parted, panting hot breaths against Le Chiffre’s smooth skin. He turned his head, his bright blue eyes startled to find Le Chiffre’s face so close to his own. “I’m here with you,” he said, a soft whisper. He could feel Le Chiffre’s hand, strong and steady at his neck, the other pressed to his chest, long fingers fanning wide, his thumb caressing over the soft fabric. “Le Chiffre,” Joe said, and he tilted his head slightly. The man was so close. His nearness consumed him. His touch brought him back from the bloody roadside, brought him to the narrow Paris alleyway, pressed against cool brick. Joe’s heart was beating too fast, but it was no longer from fear, but from Le Chiffre, Le Chiffre pressing to him, it was all Le Chiffre, and Joe could feel his breath on his cheek, and Joe was leaning into it, turning his head ever so slightly – 

“Le Chiffre, sir!” Mr. Driver called from the mouth of the alley, and Le Chiffre took a step back from Joe, retracting his hands and leaving him slumped against the wall. “Sorry to interrupt,” the chauffer said, “but you’ve just had an urgent call. They need you at the club. Right away.”

Le Chiffre nodded, a sharp motion, and then resettled his hand on Joe’s elbow. 

“Can you walk?” he asked Joe. 

Joe was breathless and dazed, confused from the images in the shop window and red-faced by the thought that he had just nearly tried to kiss Le Chiffre. He covered his face with his hands and groaned. “Yes, I can walk. I’m not an invalid,” he grumbled, and he yanked his elbow out of Le Chiffre’s hand and traipsed past him. 

He wasted no time making his way to the limousine, and didn’t wait for Mr. Driver to open the door. He opened it himself and sat down inside, scooting all the way across the seat to the opposite window, which he stared out of, his arms crossed protectively over his chest. 

He could hear Le Chiffre speaking with Mr. Driver outside, and then Le Chiffre was entering the limo. He did not try to sit beside Joe. 

“Mr. Connor,” he said brusquely, choosing to tuck in his shirt instead of look at Joe, “I’m afraid I must run a short errand before we return to the hotel.”

Joe didn’t speak, only nodded, once, the bare minimum of possible responses, and then leaned his head back against the seat. The calmness of the orchestra had abandoned him. He sat huddled in his corner of the limousine, his mind swarming with thoughts of Le Chiffre’s lips on his skin and his own face playing across the television. Joe’s breath caught in his throat as he remembered.

There had been words written beneath his name as the footage played. 

Missing Person.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a link to the song playing in the garden. I'm moderately obsessed with it.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9wA7FuoGGM


	7. Chapter 7

“I’m going to ask you to wait for me here, Mr. Connor,” Le Chiffre said as the limo came to a stop. 

Through the window, Joe could make out an old, gothic building, lights flickering in the front windows. The ride had been a silent one, Joe concentrating on righting his pulse as he tried to sort through the mess of his mind. Le Chiffre had been stoic, still, tidying the abuse Joe had done to his person in the alley. By the time they arrived at their alleged destination, ‘the club’ as Mr. Driver had called it, Le Chiffre’s shirt was tucked and crisp, his tie was straight, and his hair was smooth. All signs of Joe throwing himself at him were done away with, like it had never happened. As Joe looked at him, he could almost believe it. But the feeling of Le Chiffre so close was not something he would be forgetting so easily, especially not in the span of a single limousine ride.

“Where’s ‘here?’” Joe asked Le Chiffre. 

“A place of business,” Le Chiffre answered stiffly. “You will wait?”

“What else would I do?” Joe asked, sincere, but Le Chiffre was still waiting on tenterhooks, his eyes gleaming eerily in the dark of the limo, and so Joe elaborated. “I will wait.”

“Thank you,” Le Chiffre said. “I will try to be as expedient as my business allows. Pardon me,” he said, and then Mr. Driver was opening the door for him, and Le Chiffre was stepping out. 

When the door closed again, Joe was left in the suffocating solitude of the limousine. He watched Le Chiffre gliding, his gait long and graceful, up the stone steps until he reached the door. In the shadow of the building, Le Chiffre looked like an otherworldly thing to Joe, ethereal, the miniscule sheen to his suit jacket’s fabric gleaming slightly as he moved. Joe watched him until the door opened, and Le Chiffre disappeared through it. 

And then Joe resumed his troubled thoughts. 

His physical reaction to the news footage had subsided, but mentally, he ached. He remembered that moment clearly, the one at the roadside with Rachel and her cameraman. What had his name been? Joe either couldn’t remember, or had never bothered to ask. The moment was fresh in his mind, as though it had just happened, and honestly, it had. That image of himself, wide-eyed, pale, and brutalized, had been captured only days before. Three days? Four? Joe rubbed a hand over his face, and admitted to himself that time was beginning to blur. 

Already his time with Le Chiffre seemed supernaturally extended, a handful of hours stretched across space until Joe couldn’t quite make out where it had begun, and he definitely couldn’t make out where it ended, if that end point even existed. 

And he was a ‘Missing Person,’ according to the BBC’s scroll. Had his mother not received his message or had it been disregarded? Would they be looking for him here? A part of Joe found it difficult to believe anyone would care that much over his whereabouts to put up a fuss. But there he’d been, on the countless television sets on a random Paris street. 

Joe slunk lower in his seat. He had seen so much death and the world was seeking him, but beneath it all, heavier somehow, he felt an unnamable loss in his chest. He looked back to the door through which Le Chiffre had vanished. Joe had almost kissed him in that alley, and though his state had been addled, he knew it wasn’t wholly to blame for the misstep. He wracked his brain, tried to see the moment behind his eyelids; had Le Chiffre made to move away before the chauffer interrupted them? Joe felt himself growing hot as he remembered the feeling of Le Chiffre’s breath against his cheek. Joe had tilted his head and leaned in to kiss him, and Le Chiffre – Joe strained to summon the moment – had Le Chiffre been about to allow it? Would their lips have connected if Mr. Driver’s voice hadn’t torn Le Chiffre from his grasping hands?

Joe touched fingertips to lips, and in a moment of indulgence, allowed his imagination to play out the scene. If Le Chiffre had allowed it, if he’d returned Joe’s kiss, would it have been sweet and soft, Le Chiffre’s mouth shy and careful against his own, in fear that he would break? Or would it have been rougher, sharper, teeth and tongue and bruising fingers, like in his dream?

He sighed and ran his hands over the corduroy of his slacks, and then he looked back at the annoyingly vague building. Joe was not a club sort of person, but the clubs he had been privy to in the past had entertained more pronouncement than a few flickering candles in a window. The naïve schoolteacher couldn’t begin to guess the business Le Chiffre had in such a building. 

He couldn’t guess, but he could find out.

When Joe opened the limo door, he was immediately waylaid by the chauffer, with whom he was already mildly irritated. 

“Mr. Connor is to wait in the limo,” Mr. Driver told him, his gloved hand lifted between them in a stopping signal. “Le Chiffre’s specific orders.”

“His orders?” Joe scoffed as he stepped past the flimsy barrier and headed toward the front door of the gothic building. Now that his view wasn’t skewed by his awkward angle in the limousine, Joe could see the gargoyles, actual, honest-to-god, stone-carved gargoyles, two of them, on the overhang above the door. And on said door was an iron knocker. Joe stared for a moment, truly surprised, tickled almost, and then looked back at the chauffer, a gleam of amusement flashing in his blue eyes. “I don’t have to follow any orders of Le Chiffre’s,” Joe told him. And the chauffer’s noise of protest was smothered by the heavy knocker as Joe lifted it and let it fall against the door, once, twice. 

“Mr. Connor, I implore you to reconsider,” Mr. Driver was saying by the sidewalk, and Joe could see him shuffling uncomfortably in his polished shoes. He was about to cleverly tell the chauffer to ‘shove off,’ but as he was mid-head turn, the door clicked open. Joe left the disgruntled driver to his devices and faced the man awaiting him in a candlelit foyer. 

Joe blinked at the doorman, uncertain as to how to proceed. The man was attired in a black and white pinstriped suit and had a cleverness in his eyes that made Joe instantly wary. 

“Erm,” he muttered, his years of high-tier education shining bright for all to admire, “hello.”

“Bonsoir,” the doorman said, but that was all he said, and then he was closing the door. 

Joe caught his hand around it before it could connect and shut him out. “Sorry, hi,” he began again. “I need to get in there, please.”

The doorman widened the swing of the door so his whole body stood in the frame, intimidating broad shoulders stretching the entirety of the threshold. “Naturally, sir,” the doorman said. “Your name, please.”

Joe lifted his chin, trying to match the pinstriped goon’s haughtiness, and said without considering the threat, “Mr. Connor.”

“I don’t know you, Mr. Connor,” said the doorman with an arch of his carefully groomed brow.

“I am an employee of Le Chiffre’s,” Joe said in a heavily applied bravado. “I believe you know him.”

“I do,” replied the man as he stepped aside and waved Joe through. “How serendipitous for us both.”

That prickled the hair on the back of Joe’s neck, but he took advantage of the passage while it presented itself, and stepped through the door into the building’s foyer. 

“I would ask for your jacket, Mr. Connor,” came the snide voice shutting the door behind them, “but it seems that’s not necessary.”

Joe flushed and tried not to run his hands over his shirtsleeves. “It’s not necessary. I’ve saved you the hassle, haven’t I?” 

At that, the doorman smirked, and then he began his light-footed saunter down the dimly lit hall, motioning for Joe to join him. 

Their footsteps echoed as they traveled down the passageway, until they reached its end, and the doorman stopped outside a second set of comely, ceiling high oak doors. Joe cocked his head, hearing a faint hum of music, the bump of a bass through the soles of his shoes. 

“Sadly, this is where I leave you, Mr. Connor, employee of Le Chiffre’s,” said the doorman, and with that, he spun on his heels and began his trek back to the foyer, abandoning Joe to his hesitance. 

He placed a cautious palm against the door, took a rallying gulp of air, and pushed. 

The club strobed neon, colors flashing hectic and loud against the swarm of bodies cloistered beneath their stream. A dance floor, music, little melody discernible to Joe past the driving thump that matched his booming heart. He stepped into the room, gigantic, the size of a warehouse, and he gaped at its contrary nature to the gothic construct outside. It was the absolute opposite of what Joe would have imagined, if he’d thought to imagine. Surely if he’d had his druthers, Le Chiffre would never in a million years frequent a club such as this. Joe’s eyes roamed, no, they were pulled, to the scantily clad, gyrating bodies roaming the center of the room. He scanned past the bare abdomens, taut and glistening, and the jutting hipbones, the painted faces, and began to search for the familiar, elegant silhouette of a black-suited man. 

He was forced to venture further inside, wherein a woman trapped him with her pretty, batting eyes, and pressed her chest against him, her pink frosted lips mouthing against his ear as she spoke. “Looking for someone?” she asked, and then she pulled slightly away from her friendly assault, and bit her lip as she met his eyes. 

Joe wondered, in an introspective moment of horror, if that was what he looked like when he exhibited the same habit of bitten lips, but he set such worries aside, and decided to try his hand at a glimmer of honesty. A novelty, perhaps, in that debauched place. “I’m looking for a man,” he said. “Maybe you can help me?”

She frowned, pink and pouty. “If you were looking for a woman, I’d be of more help,” she told him. He shrugged helplessly, and her pretty mouth broke into a broad smile. “You precious thing, I can’t resist you. Is there a particular man who’s been lucky enough to tickle your fancy?”

Joe sighed, returning her smile with sheepish countenance. “A man called Le Chiffre,” he said, and he could pinpoint the moment her almond eyes sparked with recognition. 

“A worthy fancy,” she said after a poorly contained giggle, and then she helped herself to stepping away and drinking him in fully, her eyes thirsty as they ranged from foot to curl. “So you’re his type. I had wondered,” she said. 

“I’m not – I’m just, erm, looking for him,” he sputtered doltishly, cheeks as pink as the woman’s lipstick. “I saw him come in. Have you seen him?”

She nodded and slipped her hand into his un-bandaged one, leading him around the throng of writhing bodies. Around, not through, for which Joe was eternally grateful. When she’d concluded her navigation, Joe found they were standing on the far side of the dance floor, a ridiculously lengthy bar splayed at their backs. She pushed him gently into a stool of clear plastic, with a swivel top. Joe teetered before catching his hands against the bar. The woman at his side barked a laugh that threw back her head, ashen hair cascading over her shoulders in hypnotic waves. Her top, Joe noted, was made entirely of pink and silver sequins, a butterfly spreading its wings across her bosom and crisscrossing over her back in satiny strings. 

“Buy me a drink, and I’ll tell you about Le Chiffre,” she said as she collected herself on the barstool beside him. 

“I just need to know where he is,” Joe began, but when her pout returned, he lifted a summoning finger to the bartender. “What would you like, then?” he asked the woman. 

Grinning like a child, she leaned in and kissed his cheek. When the bartender approached, she paid him with the same affection, whispering an order in the bearded man’s ear. He winked at her and promptly poured two shots of whiskey, doubles, and set them on the bar in front of Joe and his sparkly companion. 

“Cheers,” she said, lifting her glass to clink against Joe’s. It caught the light of the strobes and reflected rainbows over Joe’s fingers. 

“Cheers,” he said, draining half his glass in one sip. “So. Le Chiffre,” he tried. 

She looked like she was the cat and he was the canary. “You’re smart, huh?” she asked.

Joe snorted and tilted his head, as if he’d misheard her, which he could’ve done; the music was loud enough. “Pardon?”

Her tongue jutted out to wet her lips, and she took a kittenish lap of her drink. “You must be really smart,” she said again, louder, slower, this time with hand gestures, her manicured finger tapping against her teased cap of hair. It reminded Joe of Le Chiffre, pressing his fingers to his left temple. He shook his head to clear the image from his mind and tried to focus on the person in front of him. It was more difficult than it should have been to align his eyes, but then he had shared two bottles of champagne, not had supper, and then downed a shot of whiskey. 

“Why do you think I’m smart?” Joe asked, curious. He downed the rest of his drink, just to have something to do, and set it back to the bar. The woman drained hers and placed it delicately besides Joe’s. With a flip of her hair, they were both refilled. 

“Because you must be smart, to hold his interest,” she said, ducking her head slightly into a gossiper’s posture. “He’s a genius.”

Her words resonated and Joe bit his lip, an accidental mirroring of the young woman beside him. “A genius?” he asked. “How do you mean?”

Her brown eyes narrowed as if she couldn’t believe his question. “How do I mean? I mean he’s fucking brilliant, pardon my French,” she said with a laugh. “Do you smoke?” she asked. 

“Not really,” he said, frustrated by her frivolousness. “He’s a genius?” he asked her, trying to reign in her flighty attention as she searched her tasseled purse for a cigarette. “Why do you say that?”

“Oh!” she said, pulling a clove from a petite copper case. Joe had to wait for the bartender to come over with a lighter before she continued, inhaling a plume of thick smoke through her nostrils, and blowing it back out through puckered lips. “Well, his name says it all, doesn’t it?” she said, tapping the cigarette to the floor. Apparently, an ashtray was not on her list of concerns. “Le Chiffre.”

“The cipher?” Joe asked. 

“Ciphers, numbers,” she said. “He’s a mathematical fucking prodigy. He’s definitely the smartest guy to roll through this place, since I’ve been here anyway.”

Joe had wondered about his name, knew he was intelligent; you could tell by looking at him that he was intelligent, but Joe hadn’t thought much further than that. 

“So you must be really smart, too,” she said, smiling as though she’d solved some sphinx’s riddle. “Are you a chess master like Le Chiffre? Card counter?”

Joe raised his glass to his lips uncomfortably and said into his whiskey, “Teacher.”

She cupped her hand around her ear. “What?”

“I – I’m a teacher,” Joe said, loudly enough to capture a few curious glances from other frequenters of the bar. He scratched at the scruff on his neck and sipped his drink. It burned his throat and he felt suddenly hot. Probably, he should be drinking water. 

“A teacher!” she squealed, delighted. “That makes sense. I get it. Totally.” She patted his head, familiar and warm, like they’d been friends forever. 

“So,” Joe said, politely swerving out of her reach on his swivel seat, “have you seen him?” 

“Yeah, he’s right over there,” she said, pointing a glitter-polished finger over Joe’s shoulder. 

He spun in his seat just in time to see a tall, lithe figure walking through a shiny, aluminum-fronted door. Following behind him was a mountain of a man, dressed all in black, same as Le Chiffre. Joe tried to squint past the smoky club, to make out the innards of the room, but it was too far, and it was too dark, and he was too drunk; he couldn’t see. He turned back to the woman, exasperated. 

“Did he see me?” Joe asked her, and she laughed. 

“Do you think if he’d seen you he would have gone into the back room with that other guy?” she asked. 

Joe turned back to the door tucked away in the darkest corner of the club, discreet except for its gaudy surface. “No, I don’t think he would have,” answered Joe, and he was relieved that Le Chiffre hadn’t spotted him. In fact, Joe felt guilty for not following his request to wait in the limo. He should go back, he knew, back to Mr. Driver, back to a cool bottle of water in the mini-fridge beneath the window and the soft leather bench seats. But Le Chiffre had disappeared into a mysterious room with a strange, bulking man, and Joe could not pry himself from his barstool. He clutched the drink in his hands, which were clammy, and stared at the closed door, the door keeping him from Le Chiffre. There were so many doors keeping him from Le Chiffre, he realized. He also realized, being a smart teacher, that he was unduly drunk. 

“Hey, do you want to dance with me?” the blonde asked, popping out of her stool and onto her platforms with enviable ease. “I don’t think your boyfriend would mind.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Joe said, eyes barely skimming over hers before returning to watch the back door. “But no, thank you. I’m not in a dancing mood.”

She ruffled his hair again affectionately and planted another bright pink kiss on his cheek. “Okay. Find me later if you change your mind, professor,” she whispered in his ear, and then she was gone, quick as the beat that pulsed from the speakers. Only her empty glass remained, sticky and lipstick stained.

Joe shouted vaguely after her that he wasn’t a professor, and then set his elbows against the bar, aware that his arm was resting in a pool of mystery liquid. He didn’t care, not until he remembered, with a start, that he was still wearing the shirt Le Chiffre had loaned him, and then he brought his arm up so quickly that he nearly fell backwards off his stool. He brought the fabric up to his tired eyes to inspect the damage, but the ever-changing lights of the dance floor made any thorough inspection impossible. He glanced at the back door, and then down to the stained sleeve, and something inside him felt intolerably pained at the thought of destroying the soft blue material Le Chiffre had so generously given. 

The next second found Joe staggering from his stool. He turned his scruffy head about until he saw the universal stick figure, neon blue with little neon trousers, and he kept his eyes trained to the spot as he crossed the floor, sidestepping the mass of dancers, until he reached the door of the men’s room. He stood outside of it for a swaying moment, and then it opened from the inside and nearly hit him in the face. 

“Watch out!” said a pretty, raven haired boy in French as he pushed past Joe with languid steps, his hands smoothing over Joe’s shoulders as he went. 

“Sorry, mate,” Joe replied drunkenly, and he entered the washroom. The lighting wasn’t of the usual, unforgiving fluorescence usually found in public bathrooms, but at least it wasn’t flashing and changing color every two seconds. Joe examined the sticky sleeve over the sink. It was a brownish stain, probably from his own whiskey drink he’d sloppily slammed down or the bartender had sloppily poured. Either way, it wouldn’t do. Joe turned on the sink faucet and splashed the sleeve with water. It was cold and bracing, and after a small consideration, Joe splashed some on his face, as well. When he looked up, his reflection in the mirror was unavoidable and unforgiving. His eyes were red, peering out beneath sodden, dark sweeps of hair. The only color on his face was the bright pink lipstick smudge. He looked frightful. It was no wonder Le Chiffre had asked for him to wait in the limo. Joe would not have wanted to be seen with him either. 

“Mr. Connor?” 

Joe jumped, thinking for a moment that Le Chiffre had found him, but when he turned, he saw an unfamiliar man standing at the sink beside him. Joe thought that he must be very encumbered with drink indeed, to not have noticed the man until now. 

“Yes?” he asked the man, who was leaning against the black ceramic sink with his hands in his pockets. He wore a mustache, blonde and wispy. Joe didn’t like the look of him. 

“Joe Connor?” the mustached man asked. 

“Yes?” Joe asked, confused. “May I help you?”

The man grinned, toothy and sharp, predatory. “Perhaps.”

A cold, icky feeling settled in the pit of Joe’s stomach as he remembered, too late, that he probably shouldn’t be passing around his real name like he hadn’t a care in the world. He scolded himself inwardly, as much as he could in his drunken state, and reminded himself that his face was all over the BBC news, and if he had chanced to see it, anyone could have seen it. This man could have seen it, and Joe had just handed him his identity on a silver platter. He was not smart enough, it would seem, after all. Not smart enough for Le Chiffre. 

“Excuse me,” Joe said as the man was opening his mouth to speak, and he slid past him to the door. The fact that the man yanked at his elbow caught Joe completely by surprise. Joe pulled his arm away, clenching his hand into a fist so tight it tore at his healing cuts, and so he was hissing with pain and cradling his hand as he barreled through the bathroom door, the mustached man hot on his heels. 

“Don’t touch me,” Joe yelled at the man stalking him across the club. Joe was bee-lining for his swivel stool at the bar, as if by reaching it, he could be safe from the mustached man trailing him. He was nearly there, nearly to an unspoken base that would be of no consequence at all, and certainly of no assistance, when the back door swung open and Joe froze. 

The giant, muscular man came through the door, his face as serene as a millpond, and behind him, Le Chiffre appeared, sweaty browed and snarling. He brandished the silver-cased inhaler from his jacket pocket and brought it to his lips, breathing deeply. Then he replaced it, and accepted a handkerchief from the mountain beside him. Joe watched him dab at the inner corner of his eye. Joe might have thought Le Chiffre was crying, which didn’t make sense, but the tears were too dark and almost looked like blood, which made even less sense. Joe was trying to decide how best to avoid both his mustached pursuer and the grimacing Le Chiffre, when the latter man’s eyes darted up, and fixed directly on Joe.

Joe’s mouth worked wordlessly as he was compelled, by sight alone, to take a few steps back. He could see from his peripheral that the mustached man had already fled, which filled Joe’s heart with dread. The sight of Le Chiffre had scared him off, and it was all too easy to guess why. The Le Chiffre staring at Joe now was a wild, dangerous thing. His teeth were bared, and Joe had a crazy thought that if the music weren’t so loud, he’d be able to hear the banker growling. At him. 

Joe turned, escaping from the fiery gaze, and took a cue from the mustached man. He moved through the club to the exit as quickly as his staggering feet would carry him. The high and heavy doors were tricky, but with a forceful shove of his shoulders, Joe had them open, and he was back in the long, dark hallway. The doors shut behind him and the music died blissfully away, only a dull heartbeat in the calm of the candlelight. 

“Mr. Connor, leaving so soon?” asked the doorman, and Joe shrugged past him, opening the front door himself, and fleeing from the building. He almost lost his balance and fell down the stone steps to the sidewalk, but saved his balance well enough to crash into the side of the limousine instead. Mr. Driver was already getting out of the driver’s seat and running around to see to him. 

“Sir, are you alright?” he asked, holding the door open for Joe. 

“I’m fine!” Joe yelled, ducking into the limo and sliding to its farthest reaches. 

Le Chiffre was a minute behind him, and Joe could hear the slightest raising of voices as he conversed briefly with the chauffer before joining Joe in the limousine. 

Joe held his breath, afraid to look at Le Chiffre, afraid at what he would say when he did. But Joe did not look and Le Chiffre did not speak to him, and they rode back to the hotel in a heavy and ominous silence.

 

When they reached the hotel, Le Chiffre walked ahead of Joe, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, leaving Joe to ride it alone. So Joe reached the rooms before Le Chiffre. He slid his lock into the key and opened the door to his room. He was drunk and hungry and miserable, and after he locked the door behind him, he collapsed onto his bed in a pathetic heap. He had time to admire the fresh sheets, to be grateful that the maid service had come to launder his bloodied bed, before he heard Le Chiffre enter the neighboring room with a slammed door. Then Joe looked up at their adjoining door, the door he had left wide open earlier, the door Le Chiffre was storming through, his eyes wicked.

“Mr. Connor, were you confused when I left you in the limo?” he seethed, his accent thick in his ire, smoldering. He walked until he was standing directly over Joe on the bed, glaring down at him with an expression Joe had not yet seen on his handsome face. Anger. Le Chiffre was angry with Joe. “Or was I confused when you told me you would wait until I was finished with my business? Was that not what you said?”

“No, I said I would wait,” Joe said, voice small, shoulders slouched. “But, Le Chiffre, I – ”

“I asked you to wait for a reason,” Le Chiffre continued, voice growing quiet and deadly. “You had no business in that place.”

“What business did you have there?” Joe asked, the alcohol in his system betraying his better judgment. He stood abruptly from the bed, toe to toe with Le Chiffre. “What were you doing in that back room?”

Le Chiffre looked torn in his anger, like he was deciding whether or not to step back from Joe or surge forward. They were so close that Joe could feel the heat radiating off the other man. He could see Le Chiffre’s nostrils flare as he tried to bridle his quickened breath. 

“You could have been seen by someone,” Le Chiffre said. 

“Worried someone might recognize the missing teacher from the genocide?” Joe asked mockingly, and he gasped when Le Chiffre grabbed him roughly by the shoulders and shook him. 

“I have enemies, Mr. Connor, and if anyone saw you there with me, for me, you could have been taken. Or killed,” he said. His voice was deep and dangerous and his pupils were huge in the dark hotel room. “I told you to wait. Why, why didn’t you listen to me?”

“I wanted to – ” Joe began, but he stopped before he could finish foolishly. How could he tell Le Chiffre he had followed him into the club because he’d wanted to see him? Because he couldn’t stand being separated from him for all of twenty minutes? Le Chiffre’s hands tightened on Joe’s shoulders, pulling another gasp from the teacher, and then he released him and took several steps back. 

Joe took one forward, his response automatic. “What were you doing in that back room, Le Chiffre?” he asked.

“Mr. Connor,” Le Chiffre began, but it was Joe’s turn to be angry now as he closed the distance Le Chiffre had placed between them. 

“You’re a banker that sells off hostages. You’re a genius, chess playing prodigy. You have employers that send you around the world to do god knows what in the back of seedy as hell secret clubs,” Joe ranted hysterically, drunkenly. “Who are you? Tell me who you are,” he begged, and his hands cupped around Le Chiffre’s face demandingly. “Please. I want to know.” 

Le Chiffre grabbed hold of Joe’s wrists and pried away his seeking hands, and with a light shove, the gentlest of shoves, he pushed Joe away. Joe stumbled back over his feet and fell onto the bed. 

The men stared at one another, the silence between them deafening, and then, “Maybe I should have gotten in the other limo.”

The room was dark enough to hide Le Chiffre’s expression that followed Joe’s words, but the outline of his shoulders could be seen, tensing in the moonlight that flooded through the open window. A long moment passed, and Joe thought Le Chiffre would say nothing at all. He hoped, even, that the comment would go unheeded. But then Le Chiffre tilted his head slightly and parted his lips. He gathered in a little breath and Joe held his own, and then Le Chiffre responded.

“Maybe you should have,” he said, and Joe’s stomach tossed violently. “I will arrange for another one to escort you in the morning. Wherever you wish,” he said, and then he turned through the open door connecting their rooms. “I think that would be for the best.” And then he shut the door between them. 

Joe heard the lock click. 

Then he headed to the shower, hoping the roar of the water would drown out his exhausted sobs.


	8. Chapter 8

Joe didn’t dream, he nightmared, and the only solace in his restless night theatre was the surprising lack of machetes. In fact, violence was completely absent, a change from the horror show to which Joe had grown begrudgingly accustomed. Instead, the root of the nightmare thrived in the dark spaces between things unsaid and questions unanswered.

He woke with the rising sun and left his nest of mangled sheets, bare feet padding softly over the carpet until he stood before the hotel window. With arms crossed to hug his chest, Joe followed the creep of the orange sun until it beamed high enough in the sky to light the streets. He watched the city as it yawned, stretched, and came alive, ready to meet the new day. 

It was more ready for the day than Joe, who wiped at his bleary eyes and pressed his forehead against the cool window, half awake, half asleep, and wholly retched. He listened for sounds of Le Chiffre moving around in the room next door, but could hear nothing but the whoosh of traffic below as cars took turns beeping at one another.

He sighed and lifted his arms above his head, trying to lessen the soreness across his shoulders. Joe had not expected Le Chiffre to be there, but a part of him had hoped. Just as well, he thought, moving from the window and heading for the bathroom. He noticed that their adjoining door was cracked and stopped. His heart fluttered. At one point during the night, Le Chiffre had unlocked the door between them. To do what? Stand over him in bed and glare at him some more? 

Joe turned, and from the corner of his eye, he spied the reason for Le Chiffre’s intrusion. It was lying on his bedside table. He approached it slowly, as if it might bite him, or disappear, and he wasn’t sure which would be preferable. Joe held out his hand and touched it. 

Le Chiffre’s book, his tired copy of The Odyssey. He had left it for Joe. 

Sucking his lower lip between his teeth, Joe picked up the book gingerly, flipping the thin pages through his fingers. A scribble on the inside of the front cover gave him pause, and he turned on the lamp to make it out. 

‘Mr. Connor,’ it read, penned in black ink, looping and familiar. ‘May you have better luck on your own journey home. Please keep the clothes. Every man should own a pair of suspenders.’ His name was signed beneath. 

Joe held the book to his chest, closing his eyes and feeling its weight in his arms, and then he unzipped his rucksack and placed it inside, next to his Iliad. He stared at them nestled side by side, and then went about his business. 

He had no doubt that, when he left the hotel, there would be a driver waiting for him in a white stretch limousine, with orders to take Joe wherever he wished to go, so Joe dawdled. He showered (with no incident, thank you very much), and then hunted through the boutique shopping bags that had found their way into his room at some unknown time the previous evening. With a mind for travel, he selected trousers of rich navy blue, and a peachy, French cuffed shirt. He had no cufflinks, of course, but he rolled up the sleeves to his elbows, and decided that would be good enough. Who would care, really, what Joe wore? The chauffer? His mum? He ran a hand through his clean, damp hair, not bothering to tend to its curls either. Once again, who would care? Certainly not Joe, and certainly not Le Chiffre, who had not even cared enough to stay and say goodbye. 

The thought angered him. The man who had picked him up off the dusty African road and swept him away to Paris on a private plane, was sending him off with a book and a bag of clothes. Joe felt like a childish tourist with his arms piled high with souvenirs. ‘Oh yeah’ he’d tell his mum after she hugged his neck. ‘I had a swell time in Paris. Look at all the cool stuff I got!’ 

A groan escaped him as he thought of his mother. He should ring her, tell her he was heading home, because he supposed he was. Where else would he have the driver take him? He had nowhere else to be. And then everyone could calm down and stop flashing his face on the news. Or, he thought with a sickening twist in his gut, he would be bombarded by the news channels, people wanting to ask him about Rwanda and his experience and where he’d been the past few days. Would he tell them about the handsome stranger who had captured the truck full of UN guards and bought him suspenders? Somehow he couldn’t see that part of the tale going over well. 

Joe ordered room service, lots of it, and took his time eating it. He did not feel guilty about the two mimosas. Then he snoozed for a while, telling himself that he needed to rest a bit before his journey. When he woke, it was full-fledged afternoon, and Joe had run out of reasons to linger. His bag was packed and repacked. He’d made his bed, folded his used towels, and changed the bandage on his hand. Now, it seemed there was nothing left to do but leave. 

Joe had his hand on the door handle when the thought occurred to him. He set his bag down and rifled through it, taking out what he needed, and then he walked to the adjoining door. He entered Le Chiffre’s room with an overwhelming feeling of shyness, and crossed to his bed. The pen trembled in his hand, and so the words weren’t even or pretty, nor were they clever, for Joe could not think of anything clever to say. So he just wrote, ‘Thank you,’ and signed his name, ‘Joe,' and set his copy of The Iliad on Le Chiffre’s table. 

He placed his palm against it, a solemn goodbye between a teacher and his book, and that’s when he saw it, a gleam of silver flashing in the afternoon sun, sitting, forgotten, on the table by the window. Joe walked over and picked it up. 

Le Chiffre’s inhaler. 

It felt heavy, solid, and cool in his hand. The silver casing was polished and smooth, obscuring the label of the Albuterol tube inside. Joe squinted at the tiny prescription lettering on the side of the tube: Take one dose, three times a day, or as needed. 

And there was a name written beneath: Jean Duran. 

Jean Duran? His dark eyebrows knitted together, curious. Was that Le Chiffre? He put the inhaler in his pants pocket and left Le Chiffre’s room. Then he bent to take up his bag and left the hotel. 

 

As he had suspected, a driver was waiting for him outside. But where he’d expected a stranger’s face, he was greeted instead by Mr. Driver’s winning grin. 

“Good day, Mr. Connor,” he said, taking the bag out of Joe’s hands to place in the trunk. “I’m under strict orders to take you wherever you wish to go.”

Joe returned the man’s smile, holding his hand over his eyes to shade from the bright sunshine. “I thought that might be the case, Mr. Driver. Le Chiffre’s instructions were very specific?” 

“Yes, sir. ‘Anywhere he wishes to go,’ he said,” returned Mr. Driver. 

Joe laughed. “Alright, then, I know where I wish to go, but I’ll need your help getting there.”

“Of course,” said the chauffer, the first signs of worry creasing deep lines across his forehead. “That’s my job.”

“Great,” Joe said. “I need you to take me to Le Chiffre.”

Mr. Driver blinked at him. Then, “Mr. Connor, I’m supposed to take you wherever you wish to go, to leave Paris.”

“I don’t wish to leave Paris just yet. I wish to be taken to wherever Le Chiffre is,” answered Joe. “He’s conducting business, yes?”

“Yes, sir, but – ”

“You know where he is?”

Mr. Driver nodded. 

“Then, as Le Chiffre’s strict orders were to take me wherever I wish to go, I wish to go wherever Le Chiffre is.” Joe met the driver’s eyes. “So you will take me there, please.” Joe stepped politely around the chauffer and opened the limousine door for himself. “Thank you, Mr. Driver,” he said, and then he moved to sit inside.

He watched with muted humor as the driver shuffled around to the driver’s seat, and then Joe settled back and waited to see where he would be taken.

He was not surprised, but perhaps a tad disappointed, when the limo arrived outside the building. Joe exited the limo and eyed down the twin gargoyles. Mr. Driver was muttering something in Russian, probably something Joe was glad he couldn’t understand. 

“Don’t worry,” Joe told him, and he placed a friendly hand on the chauffer’s shoulder before turning to walk up the stone steps to the great door. He ignored the iron knocker, using his knuckles instead to tap congenially. 

When the door opened a moment later, Joe was greeted by a snobbish, pinstriped doorman. 

“Back so soon, Mr. Connor?” the man asked. In the daylight, Joe could make out the white coloring his temples.

“So it would seem. I have important business. May I enter?” Joe asked. Inside his trouser pocket, his hand was gripped firmly around the inhaler. 

The doorman was halfway through a rotation of a rather grand eye roll, when he seemed to think better of it. He stepped to the side, opening the door and motioning for Joe to come in. Joe entered, and he did not wait to be led down the hallway, but began immediately down the corridor, toward the tall double doors. Already he could feel the bass beneath his feet. It was not yet evening, but Joe was not surprised that the club was still alive with activity. The right drugs and every time of day was a good time to dance. He pushed open the doors with determination, and entered the club.

The strobe lights were flashing and the music was thumping, and if Joe had not just been outside in the sun, he would have thought it the middle of the night. Perhaps the crowd on the dance floor thought it was, because they certainly were not letting the early hour impede their gyrations. Joe let his eyes wash over the dancers for a moment as he stepped to the side of the doors. 

He leaned against the wall, an attempt at discretion. He did not want another Mustache Man incident. He wanted to find Le Chiffre and give him his inhaler. And say goodbye properly. He wasn’t sure what that entailed, but he was damn sure it would involve more than a scribbling in a book. 

In the dark, he searched, but he did not see Le Chiffre. He moved along the club’s perimeter, slinking along the wall, avoiding the rainbow spotlights. When he’d covered two thirds of the area and still not spotted Le Chiffre, his eyes came to rest on the back door. Of course that’s where Le Chiffre would be, in the one place Joe couldn’t get to. He had a fleeting notion of walking up to the back door and giving it a knock, seeing if anyone opened it, but he banished the idea. It was stupid. Joe would have to grit his teeth and wait for Le Chiffre to leave. He settled against his spot on the wall. It wouldn’t matter if Le Chiffre was angry to see him here, yet again. It wouldn’t matter, because Joe would hand him his inhaler, and then he would be out of the man’s finely combed hair forever. Let him be mad. He could be mad and take a puff on his inhaler. 

“Why are the prettiest ones always the shyest?” someone whispered in Joe’s ear.

He squirmed away from the man, the boy, and eyed him suspiciously. He was raven haired, quite pretty himself, and wore the same clothes he’d worn the night before when he’d opened the bathroom door in Joe’s face. Joe looked him over, wondering if he’d been here dancing all night.

“Or do you just like to watch?” the boy asked with a sly smile that had Joe fidgeting nervously. 

“I’m here with someone, thanks,” Joe said, hoping the brush-off would send the boy away. 

It didn’t, of course, because that was Joe’s luck, and the boy only moved closer at his refusal. “I don’t see anyone,” he said. 

Joe shrugged, attempted to turn away, to ignore, but that only heightened the boy’s sense of challenge, apparently, because he was saddling up behind Joe now, and winding his arms around his waist. Joe slapped his hands away and moved out of his grabby reach. 

“You’re too young for me,” Joe told him, and the boy laughed, loud and ugly. 

“That’s right. You like them older, don’t you, Mr. Connor?” he asked. “And one-eyed.”

Joe felt his brows lift in surprise. “Excuse me?” His heart was racing. How did the boy know his name? Had word of his arrival spread as quickly as that? He began to turn, to walk away, handle the boy’s confrontation that way, but a hand on his wrist stopped him in his tracks. Nails bit into his skin, and he yanked his hand back. The boy did not release him. Instead, he returned the yank, clawing deep into the thin skin of Joe’s wrist, and pulling him near. 

“I hear you have a charmingly delicate disposition, Mr. Connor,” the boy hissed in his ear, and then he tugged violently, pulling Joe and finally releasing him, sending him spiraling into the crowd of bodies. 

Joe lost his balance and stumbled into the nearest dancer, a sweaty young woman whose main article of dress was glitter. She smiled hazily, grabbing him and turning, pushing him playfully back, and he was propelled further into the heart of the surging, dancing mass. 

The music was obscenely loud, and every jolt of bass brought a shiver up Joe’s spine. It pounded. Drums. The strobe lights were flashing, confusing, and Joe was pushed against another body, sweat-slick, firm, and he heard them banging against their drums, stomping their feet and chanting, laughing. Joe tried to lift his head higher, where the air was cooler, but the tide of moving bodies changed, pulling him back under. The rhythm of the drums grew faster, louder, and Joe could see them singing. Waiting. He turned. Another body. It pressed against him and left a streak of wetness against his cheek. Joe touched his hand to his face. Blood on his skin, blood on the ground, soaking the earth around the fly-ridden corpses. 

Joe couldn’t breathe. The crowd was suffocating him. He had to move, had to move through them to reach the UN vans. He tried to elbow through, tried to get by without meeting their eyes, but they were all staring at him. They were staring and crying and scared, and Joe couldn’t breathe. He didn’t want to die. He gasped for air, his hands flying to clutch at his throat. It was too hot in the church. Joe couldn’t look at Marie. She was going to be slaughtered, like the baby in the grass. 

He doubled over, hands clenching desperately at his chest, in his hair. A hip rammed against his back, sending him to his knees. Joe was drowning in blood. He would die here, like he should have died with his friends. A high heeled shoe kicked against his head and Joe fell, his hands splaying in front of him. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe, he was dying. 

Hands hot as fire lifted him, and Joe was pressed against a wall of warmth. He wrapped his arms around it and burrowed his head against it. Joe smelled fresh rain and jasmine. In a moment, Joe was freed from the crowd, and he was being led, pulled away, walking against the warmth until the drums were only a dying heartbeat, and the air was cool and breathable.

He sucked in great gulps of air, gagging on it, coughing. Joe felt something solid at his back, and he reached his hands behind him. A wall. He forced his eyes to see, and he saw peculiar eyes, one honeyed and one cloudy white, scarred and strange. A mouth, bowed and beautiful, was moving, speaking. Joe garnered his strength through his gasps, straining to listen. 

“Mr. Connor,” commanded the voice, pure and deep, a spring of water for Joe’s parched, broken body. “I’m here with you,” it said, and Joe nodded, settling his hands to his knees, doubling over to pull deep breaths into his lungs as the voice lolled him to calmness. 

In his chest, his heart was raging. Joe felt himself sliding down the wall until he was sitting, collapsing on the ground. His watery eyes darted to his surroundings. He was in a dark hallway. The hands cradling his face were Le Chiffre’s hands. The voice speaking dulcet tones of comfort was Le Chiffre’s voice. 

“Mr. Connor, you are here with me. Be calm,” Le Chiffre was saying. 

Joe’s inhale was slow and tumultuous. 

“Good, good,” Le Chiffre said. His thumbs caressed Joe’s cheeks, wiping at the lines of tears leaking from Joe’s eyes. “Would you like some water?” Joe shook his head. “Tell me, tell me what you need,” Le Chiffre told him softly. 

Joe released his haggard breath and clasped the hands at his face, holding them steady. “You,” Joe said. “I need you.”

There was a passage of seconds, wherein Le Chiffre only stared, taken aback, his lips parted in a surprised intake of air. Joe bit his lip, waiting. And then Le Chiffre pulled him forward and kissed him hard on the mouth. 

Joe sighed into the kiss, and Le Chiffre swallowed the sound, his lips sliding desperately against Joe’s. Strong arms slid down Joe’s back and pulled him into Le Chiffre’s lap. Le Chiffre pulled away only long enough to allow Joe a deep breath of air, and then he was pressing against him again, kissing Joe until their lips parted, Le Chiffre’s tongue sweeping into Joe’s mouth, tasting him, filling him. A moan sounded in the small space between them, its owner unknown as they both fought to close the distance. Joe raked his fingers through Le Chiffre’s hair and tugged, forcing back the man’s head and exposing his throat. He sucked wet kisses over his pulse, and swung one leg around, then the other, so he was straddling Le Chiffre’s waist. 

Le Chiffre pulled at his hips, pressing Joe closer, and then his hands were forcing Joe’s mouth to his own, and they were kissing, their bodies rocking together. 

All thoughts were eviscerated from Joe’s busy mind, save one. Le Chiffre, Le Chiffre, Le Chiffre. 

Le Chiffre was kissing him and touching him and swelling against him. Joe could feel him, feel his hardness pressing against his own as they panted, interlocked and undulating, on the floor of the blissfully unoccupied hallway. 

Joe bit at Le Chiffre’s lip, and the man growled against him, wrapping his arms beneath Joe’s knees and standing up in a hot, fluid motion, and then he was pushing, pinning Joe against the wall, his legs wrapped around his waist. 

They didn’t need air anymore, only lips and teeth and tongues and sweet sighs. Joe broke their kiss to suck a mark into Le Chiffre’s neck, grabbing the tie and shoving it out of his way. He let his teeth scrape over tender skin, and rejoiced in the helpless sound it pulled from Le Chiffre. 

Then he slid his hand down, smoothing over black buttons and black fabric until his fingers fumbled over the black leather belt at Le Chiffre’s waist. Joe kissed his lips again, rough and needy, as his hand began to work the buckle.

A hand shot out to Joe’s wrist, making him gasp, and the two men stopped their kissing and petting long enough to meet each other’s eyes. As Joe looked at Le Chiffre, he could see the change as it happened, as the expression shifted, as his hands lessened their grip. Le Chiffre set Joe down, letting him regain his footing before unhanding him entirely. 

“Le Chiffre,” Joe whispered, a plea, because Le Chiffre was stepping away from him. 

The man looked at a loss for words. His hair was ruffled, falling messily over his eyes. His lips were swollen and red from Joe’s kisses. He looked disgusted. 

“You were supposed to leave this morning,” he finally said, his voice breathless and wavering. “Why are you still here?”

Joe wiped his mouth, wet from when Le Chiffre had kissed him only seconds before. And now he was looking at him from across the hallway with a look that made the bile rise up in Joe’s throat. 

“I wanted to see you,” Joe said, small and quiet and shattered. 

Le Chiffre was already straightening his tie and fussing with his hair. “You’ve seen me,” he said. 

Joe stared at him. “I guess I have,” he answered once he’d swallowed past the lump in his throat, and he reached into his trouser pocket. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” Le Chiffre said, and though his lips were drawn up at the corners in a sneer, his eyes were pained, and Joe could see it. A red tear collected in the corner of Le Chiffre’s damaged eye, and Joe stepped forward with a reaching hand. 

Le Chiffre stepped back, turning his head from Joe to wipe the blood from his eye, because that’s what it was, Joe realized with a grim fascination. Blood. 

When Le Chiffre turned back to face him, a smudge of red streaked across his cheekbone, and his face was a storm. “You shouldn’t be here,” Le Chiffre repeated, his voice dangerously close to a yell.

Joe felt his face redden, and he squeezed the inhaler in his hand before throwing it at Le Chiffre. 

The man let it clatter to the floor, and then he stared at it. He looked up at Joe in disbelief, but Joe didn’t see; he was already walking down the hallway as quickly as he could without breaking into a run, leaving Le Chiffre to stand alone and confused in the dark hallway.


	9. Chapter 9

Joe considered a great many things during his limousine ride back to the hotel. 

‘Yes, the hotel,’ he’d told the chauffer. ‘No, not the airport or the train station or the bloody bus depot.’ He would return to the hotel. He had decided that before he’d walked the length of the hallway and left Le Chiffre alone with his inhaler and his thoughts. 

Upon his return, Joe stripped free of his peachy, cuffed shirt and paid it no mind as it fell in wrinkly haste to the floor. Then he ordered himself a bottle of wine from room service, poured himself a drink, a generous glass, and sat on the middle of Le Chiffre’s bed, bare-chested. And there he remained, calmly sipping at the merlot in the peaceful light of the bedside lamp, until the door jostled, turned, and opened.

Le Chiffre entered, straight-faced and immaculate, as though he hadn’t just been straddled, as though Joe’s sucking bruise wasn’t freshly purple and raw beneath his starched collar. And for a sweet moment, Joe went unnoticed on his bed, Le Chiffre’s eyes downcast, his attention elsewhere.

But when Joe raised his glass to his lips, the motion caught Le Chiffre’s attention, and his gaze fell all over him, hot and wary and utterly surprised by his presence. 

“Will you have a drink with me, please?” Joe asked, eyes flitting to the bottle at the bedside, settled beside The Iliad and a second wine glass. 

Le Chiffre’s head tilted, as it often did, and he paused in his steps, looking Joe over. Then he turned from him and resumed his ritualistic shedding of layers. Joe did not complain, only watched, drinking his wine as Le Chiffre slipped his sleek black suit jacket from his shoulders and placed it on its proper hanger. The tie was next, as long fingers lifted to loosen and lift it from his neck. Joe thought he caught a lingering touch at Le Chiffre’s throat, where he had kissed him, but it might have been an imagining, and then Le Chiffre was walking to the bedside, unbuttoning the first three buttons of his shirt as he moved.

Their eyes were locked together, the contact only breaking when Le Chiffre poured the wine into his glass. He stood for a moment, head down, and Joe knew he was looking at the book. 

“Sit with me,” Joe told him, and Le Chiffre did sit, at the foot of the bed, an arm’s length away from Joe, crossing his legs and assessing the shirtless teacher in stony silence. 

Joe allowed the quiet for a few minutes, both of them just sitting and sipping, and then he began. “You asked me, after we’d first met, whether I had love for those with whom I traveled,” he said. “And I told you that I had love for those I’d left behind.” Le Chiffre was watching him with an unnerving intensity that left Joe’s throat dry. He sipped his wine, licked his lips, and kept on. “It has only been a few days since then, but every day since I've felt a keen sort of torture in my chest. Pain earned and deserved.” Joe held his bandaged hand over his heart. “I should not have left them, I think,” he confessed, ignoring the minute break in his voice. It was unimportant there, with Le Chiffre, in the dusky hotel room. “I can’t fix the past. But I can fix my future.” Joe set down his glass of wine and drew nearer to Le Chiffre on the bed, not too close so as to threaten touch, but close enough so that, were Le Chiffre so inclined, he could shift his knee only a little and it would rest against Joe’s. “I’m not leaving, Le Chiffre, and you can’t make me.”

Le Chiffre’s face was iron. “I could make you, Mr. Connor,” he said. “I could throw you over my shoulder and drag you onto a plane, march you to your mother’s front door.”

Joe smiled at the thought. “You probably could. You’re very strong,” he said, voice so soft it was almost a whisper. “But you won’t.”

“You’re so certain?” asked Le Chiffre.

“I am,” said Joe.

“Why?”

“Because you kissed me,” Joe said matter-of-factly. “And you don’t want me to go.”

Le Chiffre took a large gulp of his wine, and if Joe didn’t know better, he would have guessed it was a stall for time. He tried to keep the amusement from his lips as he watched the stoic banker battle for resistance. When Le Chiffre finally took a breath to speak, Joe stopped him. 

“You invited me to Paris, and here I am. You can line up limos to take me home every day, but I won’t take them. I won’t leave you,” he said. 

Le Chiffre laughed at that. “I realize now that my invitation was inappropriate, Mr. Connor. I had hoped for this to be an opportunity for you to rest and relax, but it has become clear that you need professional assistance in your aid to recovery.”

“I told you what I needed, and it’s not a psychiatrist poking at me about my year in Rwanda,” said Joe, voice rising slightly, cheeks flushing greatly.

“And you think my poking would serve you better?” Le Chiffre asked, pale brows arching. 

“I think when you kissed me, everything else stopped,” Joe said, refusing to look away from Le Chiffre. 

Le Chiffre drank his wine, eyes steady on Joe. “That is not a viable option for recovery,” he said at long last, lips quirking slightly. 

“Why not?” asked Joe, past being shocked by his own brazenness. He had nothing to hide anymore. Le Chiffre had been in that hallway with him. He knew that Joe wanted him. Joe only wished he could boast the same assuredness. All Joe kept thinking of was the look of disgust on Le Chiffre’s face when he’d stepped away. “Tell me you didn’t like it.”

Le Chiffre stood, suddenly, from the bed, and Joe bounced at the loss of weight. The man set his wine glass down beside Joe’s, and for a moment, Joe thought he might return to him on the bed. But he didn’t. He moved farther away, setting two fingers to his temples, closing his eyes and sighing deeply.

Joe stood, as well, and approached him cautiously, as one would come upon some great and wild cat. “Your job is dangerous. Your employers are dangerous. You have enemies,” Joe listed. He bit his lip, stopping to stand at Le Chiffre’s side beside the window. “Are you a bad guy, Le Chiffre?” he asked. 

The older man pulled a hand through his hair idly. “I’m a banker,” Le Chiffre said to Joe. 

“A…bad banker?” Joe pressed, unable to hide the joking twinge to his words. 

Le Chiffre moved in front of Joe, bringing his hand to rest on the glass beside Joe’s head, boxing him in against the window. Joe could feel his pulse driving strong through his veins, and he held his breath as the man leaned in. 

“I’m a banker for a terrorist organization, Mr. Connor,” he growled. “My business is dangerous. I cannot have you gallivanting through clubs in which I am trying to conduct my dangerous business. You could be used as leverage against me.” Joe touched his hand lightly to Le Chiffre’s chest, and the man was drawn closer, as if magnetized. His breath was shallow and quick. “I would not have you in harm’s way. I did not pull you from the grasp of one death to thrust you into another.”

Joe heard the words, knew they were panic button words, red flag words, words that would send any sensible person running for the next flight to mum. But they were Le Chiffre’s words, and Joe absorbed them, grateful for their honesty, grateful he was even speaking them. 

“I don’t gallivant through clubs,” Joe said, his hand moving to Le Chiffre’s shirt buttons, where a triangle of his chest was exposed. His fingers stroked at the silvering hair there, nails scratching lightly at the sensitive skin beneath. 

“Did you hear me, Mr. Connor?” Le Chiffre asked, his fingers clenching against the window where his hand was still held beside Joe’s head. Joe took Le Chiffre’s other hand, the one he was holding in a fist at his side, and brought it up to his lips to kiss. 

“Did you hear me?” Joe countered, his mouth moving over rough knuckles. “I’m not leaving.”

It was taking all of Le Chiffre’s strength to hold himself back, Joe could see that now, and he relished it, nipping lightly at the tip of one of Le Chiffre’s fingers before slipping it into his mouth to gently suck. 

“Mr. Connor,” Le Chiffre hissed, pulling back his hand. “I would not put you in a position of danger if I could help it.”

Joe’s eyes were bright as he brought his hand up to caress Le Chiffre’s jaw, his morning’s shave grown out to a fetching stubble. “What position would you prefer to put me in?” he asked. 

Le Chiffre sighed, and pushed off the wall and away from Joe. “You are being brash and irrational. I work for terrorists. We cannot be involved,” Le Chiffre said. 

“Don’t lie to me,” Joe said, leaning casually against the glass, his voice languid and calm. “Why bring me to Paris at all, if it wasn’t to become involved with me?”

“I only wished to allow you rest and – ”

“I said,” Joe interrupted, not unkindly, “don’t lie to me. I’m here because you wanted me here,” Joe said. “You wanted me to be involved. You want me. Say it.”

“Mr. Connor, please.”

“Say it,” Joe said, crossing his arms as he leaned against the glass. 

“Your behavior this evening is appalling,” Le Chiffre scolded. “I would ask what’s gotten into you, but I fear such a comment would only be answered with crudeness.”

“Already we know one another so well,” Joe said, and then, before Le Chiffre could respond, he added, “Let me help you.”

Le Chiffre cocked his head. “I should not have kissed you, and for that I sincerely apologize. It has had a negative effect on your wellness.”

“Let me help you conduct your business,” Joe clarified. Le Chiffre looked at him like he was crazy, and maybe he was, but a light had flared in Joe’s chest, and it surged him into frenzy. “I don’t want to go to London,” he told Le Chiffre. “I don’t want to face them. I don’t want to give interviews. I don’t want to be that teacher that abandoned his students.” Joe felt the tremor begin in his hands, move up his arms, and arrest his shoulders. His words, so confident only a second before, were rendered weak and desperate. His nonchalant lean on the window collapsed into itself, and Joe was clutching at his stomach, slumped, strained, and defeated. 

“Mr. Connor,” Le Chiffre whispered, taking a tentative step forward. 

Joe was dizzy with all the steps between them. Why couldn’t they stay in one place? Why couldn’t that place just be together, at least for a little while? 

“I can’t go back, I can’t,” Joe said, his head shaking back and forth, his curls falling in disarray over his watery eyes. “Don’t tell me to go.”

Le Chiffre held himself back until Joe’s knees began to buckle, and then he rushed forward, sweeping Joe up in his arms before he could fall. “I won’t tell you to go,” Le Chiffre whispered to the frumpled man in his arms. He toted Joe to the bed and sat them down, leaning his own back against the headboard, and holding Joe firmly against his chest. 

“I left them,” Joe was murmuring against Le Chiffre. Big, warm hands stroked down his bare back, not urgent, persistent touches, but gentled, soothing strokes. “I left them to die.”

“You saved yourself,” Le Chiffre said, tracing comforting shapes across the smooth skin of Joe’s shoulders. “Any one of the friends you left behind would have done the same.” 

“I’m a coward,” Joe said, and the title he’d been dwelling on sounded hollow and meaningless, pressed into the soft folds of Le Chiffre’s shirt.

“You’re a survivor,” Le Chiffre said. “A coward would not have disobeyed me twice in the span of one day,” he said with a huff of laughter. “Once because you missed me. Once because you wanted to bring me medicine.”

Joe’s voice was muffled against Le Chiffre’s chest. “How do you know it was because I missed you?” Joe asked. 

Le Chiffre’s fingers stroked at his curls, and when he answered, his voice was fond and deep. “Because I missed you.”

At that, Joe lifted his head to look at the man holding him. “Let me help you at your business meetings, Le Chiffre,” Joe said.

Le Chiffre shook his head, his fingers twirling in Joe’s hair. “No.”

“Tell me you want me to stay,” Joe said. 

Le Chiffre smiled and shook his head. “No,” he said. Joe frowned, and Le Chiffre pulled him up higher on his chest, one hand holding him at the back of the neck, the other hand tilting back Joe’s head. “I think I will show you instead.”

And for the second time in as many hours, Le Chiffre kissed Joe. It lacked the urgency of before, when Joe had been whimpering and desperate for it on the club floor, but it did not lack the passion. Joe melted into the kiss, letting Le Chiffre’s tongue part his lips and slide softly against his own. 

Le Chiffre’s fingers tugged lightly in Joe’s hair, tilting his head further back, and then he rolled, so Joe’s back was pressed to the mattress and Le Chiffre was laid out on top of him. A pleased moan rose from Joe’s lips, and Le Chiffre deepened their kiss, his hand skimming lazily down the length of Joe’s naked stomach. He pulled away, but kept his face near Joe’s, nuzzling against him, letting his lips graze across Joe’s blushing cheeks. 

Joe’s eyes were black, his pupils huge, revealing only the slightest ring of sky blue. When Le Chiffre’s lips made to press against his own again, Joe held him off, pushing lightly against his chest. “Are you going to push me away again?” Joe asked. 

“You tried to take off my pants in a place of business,” Le Chiffre admonished, lips touching light kisses beneath Joe’s ear. The teacher squirmed beneath him, and Le Chiffre held him in place, hands planted firmly on his hips. “You’ll note that, currently, we are alone in my hotel room.”

Joe laughed beneath him, luxuriating in the weight of the man atop him, and the strong arms that held him down. He wanted to let Le Chiffre kiss him, and press against him, but he couldn’t stop the next words flowing from his lips. “You looked at me with such disgust,” he said, his voice an embarrassed whisper.

Le Chiffre stopped his procession of kisses down Joe’s neck, and looked at him, lifting to his elbows on either side of Joe’s head. “I was disgusted with myself,” Le Chiffre said. “I don’t normally – I mean to say that I – …” His words trailed off, and Joe watched him with wonder in his eyes. “It’s not often that I find myself –” Le Chiffre sighed, frustrated, and Joe laughed. 

“Please, don’t give yourself a stroke trying to explain,” Joe said, hands snaking up and around Le Chiffre’s shoulders. “Kiss me, and I’ll forgive you.”

The man above him opened his mouth, as if he would try to speak again, but Joe pulled him down heavily, snaring his lips in a kiss. Whatever Le Chiffre had planned to say, it was forgotten, replaced with claiming teeth and tongues. Joe was enraptured, and as the man sank more persistently against him, Joe bucked up his hips, shamelessly spreading his legs and bending his knees, coaxing Le Chiffre’s hips to grind against his own. 

Panting between possessively sweet kisses, Joe groaned at Le Chiffre’s ear, “What was that bit about this not being a place of business?”

Le Chiffre grabbed Joe’s wandering hand, the un-bandaged one, and brought it down between them, pressing it to his belt buckle. Joe’s fingers unfastened the belt as deftly as his distracted mind and one-handedness would allow, and when he had it free, he tugged at the waist of Le Chiffre’s pants, slipping them down. Le Chiffre lifted away for a moment, kicking them the rest of the way off, and then he returned to Joe, hands seeking to rid the man beneath him of his own barriers. 

Joe’s heart was pounding pleasantly in anticipation. He wanted to feel Le Chiffre’s skin hot against his own. When his trousers had been worked free, Joe lifted his hands to work the buttons from Le Chiffre’s shirt, but he was slow and struggling, and when Le Chiffre sat back to lift the shirt up and over his head, Joe laughed into the back of his hand, and then he gasped, because Le Chiffre was suddenly bare and above him, save for the snug black briefs that hugged him, delightfully tight and revealing. 

All that lay between them now was thin layers of cloth, the rest of their obstacles stripped away. Joe felt suddenly shy as he reached a timid hand out to grab Le Chiffre’s elastic waistband. Le Chiffre gave him a small smile, and lowered himself down. Their bodies pressed together, skin to heated skin. Joe found Le Chiffre’s mouth and kissed him slowly as his hand slipped beneath the black briefs. He gasped when his fingers closed around the substantial length, hot and heavy against his palm. 

Above him, Le Chiffre groaned and thrust against the tunnel of Joe’s hand. And still they kissed, Joe’s hands gripping Le Chiffre firmly and pulling more moans against his mouth as he worked him to full hardness. 

And then, Le Chiffre was grasping Joe’s hand and lifting it to hold firmly in place above his head, their fingers twining together, while with Le Chiffre’s other hand, he worked Joe free from his own, silky blue boxer briefs. Le Chiffre quirked his brow. 

“The lady at the shop made me get them,” Joe said, and he laughed as Le Chiffre pulled them slowly the rest of the way down his legs. Then Le Chiffre pulled his own briefs down his hips, and out from around his ankles, and then they were both completely presented, fully roused, and totally taken with one another. 

Joe pushed himself up on his elbows, his legs still spread invitingly, and Le Chiffre, sitting on his knees by Joe’s feet, began to kiss his way up Joe’s legs, sucking when he reached his inner thigh. 

“Le Chiffre,” Joe said, just to hear it, and the man resting between his legs held his hands firmly over Joe’s hips, and without warning, took Joe into his mouth. 

“Oh,” Joe sighed helplessly as Le Chiffre swallowed around him, enveloping him in blissful, wet heat. He slid his fingers into Le Chiffre’s silken hair, and tried his best not to thrust into his mouth. Instead, Joe twitched and moaned and raked lightly over le Chiffre’s scalp as he worked his lips up and down. 

“You better stop,” Joe said after a few minutes of Le Chiffre’s pleasing mouth, but Le Chiffre merely hummed his satisfaction against him and sucked. Joe had to clutch at his shoulders to draw him away. Le Chiffre came off, his smile trailing a thin line of spit that vanished when Joe pulled him up to kiss. 

He tasted himself on Le Chiffre’s tongue, and the sensation was dizzying. It had been so long, too long, and never so good, and Joe knew he was already near the end, even after such a short time. But Le Chiffre was none too concerned with such trivialities. He kissed Joe with skin-tingling fervency, and rutted against him, his hips driving Joe into the bed, his hands sliding around to squeeze Joe’s backside as their cocks rubbed together. 

“Le Chiffre,” Joe whimpered beneath him, feeling his stomach coiling icy hot. 

Le Chiffre breathed hard against him, his mouth pressing eager and sloppy kisses against Joe’s collarbone, over his shoulder, as he rubbed their bodies together relentlessly. 

Joe cried out at his sudden, uncontrollable release, and dug his fingers into Le Chiffre’s back, spilling hot between their sliding stomachs. Le Chiffre came after, pulsing white over Joe’s chest as he sighed against his neck. 

They breathed in tandem, clinging together, their passion spent between them, sticky and glorious. 

When Le Chiffre tried to roll away, Joe caught at his back and pressed him down to feel his weight fully on top of him. He was deliciously heavy. 

Le Chiffre pulled away slightly, just enough to look at Joe, sleepy-eyed beneath him, as he brushed damp strands from his face. Then he pressed his lips to Joe’s and kissed him, lazy, easy things that warmed Joe from the inside out. 

After a time, he allowed Le Chiffre to move, but the man did not stray far, simply reaching for a discarded shirt from the floor to wipe at the mess of Joe’s stomach, and then his own. 

When Joe reached out for him, Le Chiffre went, pulling the blanket up with him as they settled together in the bed. Joe shut his eyes to the feeling of Le Chiffre nestled up against his back, his arm wrapped around Joe’s waist to keep him close. 

And for the first time in a long time, Joe fell fast sleep, and did not dream at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know what just happened. These two could not be stopped. I was a powerless, perverted bystander.


	10. Chapter 10

When Joe awoke, Le Chiffre was gone. 

His arms sought out the warmth at his back, across the bed, but the body he’d been pressed to in the night was no longer there. Joe grunted his disapproval and rolled over, just in time to see a rather pleased looking Le Chiffre leaning in the frame of their adjoining door. He was dressed only in his black suit pants, and he held two steaming cups of coffee. 

His eyes gathered, contented and slightly smug, as he smiled at Joe, naked and tucked away in his bed. 

“I had room service come to your door instead of mine,” Le Chiffre explained, his voice husky and rough from sleep. “I did not wish to wake you.”

Joe stretched, letting the blankets fall away from his arms and chest, and yawned loudly, turning his head into the pillows. “What time is it?” he asked the older man as he approached the bed. 

“It is early,” answered Le Chiffre, sitting beside Joe and nudging his shoulder slightly with the heated mug. 

Joe glanced over his shoulder, at the man balancing coffee next to him on the bed, and then past him, reluctantly past him, to the window. All he could see in it was the reflection of two men in a soft lamp glow. It was truly early then, and the sun, as well as the city, was still sleeping. Yet there was Joe, lying in Le Chiffre’s bed, being handed a cup of coffee, black, as he sat up and leaned against the headboard. 

Le Chiffre grinned at him, revealing the charm of amiably crooked teeth, and Joe ran his hand through his curls, which, he knew from the window’s mirror, were a mussed up mess. The man beside him, on the other hand, looked wide awake, alert, graceful and lovely, his usual, utterly perfect self, except for his missing shirt, and tie, and jacket. But his hair was slicked and he’d shaved, Joe could see, and then he could feel, as he traced his fingers along the smooth, strong jaw. 

“How long have you been up?” Joe asked, fingers leaving Le Chiffre’s skin to wrap around his coffee mug. He held it up to his lips, and closed his eyes for a moment as he blew at the steam, enjoying the heat radiating on his face. Then he took a careful sip. The coffee was hot and rich and just tempered enough to not burn his tongue. He hummed approvingly and glanced up beneath sleep-hooded eyes. Le Chiffre sat, straight-backed and serene on the bed, drinking his coffee, like he was enjoying his beverage in a street-side café instead of a hotel bed. 

Joe was mesmerized with him anew in such a novel picture of unexpected domesticity. The memory of the previous night felt unreal, untouchable, and he wondered if, maybe, it had been a dream. 

“Long enough,” Le Chiffre answered and Joe frowned slightly. 

“You have business that requires your attention this morning,” Joe said, filling in his own blanks at the early-risen banker.

“I do,” said Le Chiffre. “And you will wait for me while I tend to it.” 

“Or,” Joe said, settling his coffee on the bedside in order to scoot closer to Le Chiffre, “I could come with you.” Joe placed his hand against Le Chiffre’s thigh. 

Le Chiffre set his coffee beside Joe’s and shifted toward him on the bed, bringing his hands up to cup Joe’s face, rubbing along the scruff. “No,” he said. 

“What are you doing in that back room?” Joe asked, leaning into the man’s hands. “Tell me?”

Lips at Joe’s throat succeeded in a thorough distraction, so thorough that Joe did not even mind the obvious sidestepping of his question. He felt himself smiling as Le Chiffre trailed languid kisses across his skin, running his hands through his hair to hold him close. 

“Business, Mr. Connor,” Le Chiffre said, breathing hot into the crook of Joe’s neck. 

Joe snorted. “I’m starting to wonder if you’ve forgotten my first name, and have been too embarrassed this whole time to ask,” he said, laughing as Le Chiffre buried his nose into his curls, and wrapped his arms around his waist, snatching Joe into his lap. “It’s Joe,” he said, feeling Le Chiffre’s smile as he bit against the lobe of Joe’s ear. “And one day I’m going to make you say it.” He wiggled against Le Chiffre’s lap playfully. “Or scream it. That might be better, actually.”

“You,” Le Chiffre growled, his hands splaying across Joe’s sharp hips, “are a temptation that I cannot afford this morning.” He scooped Joe up, setting his legs around his waist, a gentler parallel to their hallway indiscretion, and stood up from the bed. He walked to the bathroom and, still holding Joe snugly against his waist, turned on the shower. “Off,” he directed, and Joe slid from the straddle, but he kept his arms wrapped around Le Chiffre’s neck, grinning ear to ear. 

“Wouldst thou leave my so unsatisfied?” he asked, rocking his hips forward to rub against Le Chiffre’s tragically clothed leg. 

“Take your shower,” Le Chiffre said, expertly avoiding Joe’s seeking hips with a smile. “Have breakfast,” he continued, brushing a strand of hair out of Joe’s eyes. “I will not be long.”

Joe gazed at him, and traced the planes of Le Chiffre’s face with his fingertips. “I’ll wait for you.”

Le Chiffre nudged him toward the shower, and Joe pulled him down to kiss his mouth, soft and slow, before letting him go. The banker returned to the room to finish dressing, and Joe turned to his shower. When he was standing beneath the cascade of welcome warmth a few minutes later, he heard the door shut, the sound of le Chiffre leaving, and pouted. 

He smoothed his hand over all the places Le Chiffre had kissed, letting his eyes close. 

After a long, lazy shower, Joe did exactly what Le Chiffre instructed, and ate breakfast. He grabbed a muffin from the room service tray that had accompanied the coffee, and then slung himself over the chair by Le Chiffre’s window, not bothering to cover with more than the towel wrapped about his waist. 

He chewed softly and let his thoughts wander, not to death and grit and gore, but to full lips and hitched breath and powerful shoulders. Joe finished his muffin, licking the blueberry crumbs from his fingers. When he stood, he stretched his arms high above his head and sighed indulgently. Then he threw himself down into the bed, which Le Chiffre had tidied before he’d left. Joe rolled around, messing up the covers and burrowing. He thought how nice it would be to drift to sleep and wake up to Le Chiffre leaning over him. Maybe Joe would pull him down and climb on top of him and grab him by the tie. 

Joe laughed out loud and hid his blushing face in his hands, his smile goofy and wide. When his heart stopped pounding from thoughts of what he would to Le Chiffre when he returned, Joe napped, curled up like a cat just as the morning sun was beginning to creep through the hotel window. 

 

Joe woke from his doze and glanced, bleary eyed, at the clock. It was still only ten in the morning. He rose from the bed and dragged himself across the room, moving through the adjoining door. The sight of his un-slept in bed made him smile, and the smile remained glued to his face as he dug through his pack for some clothes. His plan of staying undressed until Le Chiffre returned had proved problematic when he’d woken from his nap with a slight chill. It was no bother. Instead, Joe would wear extra layers, and let Le Chiffre undress him, sweet punishment for making him wait. 

How long had he been gone? Joe scrunched his brow, thinking. Le Chiffre had been gone for hours and hours now. But he had said he wouldn’t be long. A pinprick of worry bothered the back of Joe’s mind, but he comforted it away, reasoning that, despite his confident words the night before, he did not actually know Le Chiffre very well at all, and perhaps, to the busy banker, four-ish hours was not a long time to be away for business. With that self-soothing conclusion, Joe struck the note of discontent from his person, and continued selecting his clothes for the day. He pulled out a royal blue v-neck and grinned. Le Chiffre liked him in blue. 

 

By half past noon, Joe was worried again. And hungry. He ordered lunch, enough for two in case Le Chiffre returned, and Joe expected that he must be returning soon. Probably any minute. 

Joe ate slowly when the food arrived on silver trays, placing one grape into his mouth at a time, hoping each time that he would be interrupted by the door opening and Le Chiffre stepping through. But then his grapes were gone and his sandwich was half eaten and his banker was still acutely absent. Joe sighed and went to stare out the window at the street below. The limousine was parked across the street, he saw, which meant he had left it for Joe to use and taken an alternate car to his place of business, no doubt that same club. 

A shivery panic began to creep within him, heightening Joe’s nerves, and he ran his hands over his face with a rough exhale. He was being ridiculous, he knew, and Le Chiffre would be back soon, maybe not as soon as Joe had initially speculated, but certainly any moment now. The sun was high in the crystal clear sky, and the brightness hurt Joe’s eyes. He turned restlessly from the window, and his eye darted to the book on the bed stand. The Iliad, yes, good idea, he patted himself mentally on the back. He would cozy up in Le Chiffre’s bed and read until he returned. Time would fly. 

 

Patroclus was dead. 

Joe shut the book and shut his eyes, rubbing them with his knuckles, and then he glanced at the clock. Three in the afternoon. He sighed warily and rolled to his side, letting himself drift into dreams of spears and golden bodies, and Le Chiffre, his warrior, conquering all in his path to reach him. 

 

Joe heard a door close and jerked awake, eyes flying open, sitting straight up, instantly alert. He smiled toward the door, expecting to see Le Chiffre, but disappointment hit him cruelly in the gut as he realized the door closing had come from down the hallway, and Le Chiffre was still gone. No, he realized with a painful thud that felt like his heart dropping, Le Chiffre was missing. 

He stood from the bed, muscles tight with tension, and flicked on the lamp, furrowing his brow that he required it, that the sun had set once more and the room had been refilled with dark, ominous night. The clock read 7:30, and Joe was living somewhere between concern and ire. 

“Where the hell are you?” he demanded into the empty hotel room. More than twelve hours had passed since Le Chiffre had kissed him and ushered him into the shower. Joe jutted out his hip, arms folded over his chest, and his foot tapped the floor anxiously. He almost laughed for it, laughed that Le Chiffre literally had him tapping his foot in wait. 

And then Joe decided that he had waited long enough, and if Le Chiffre had broken his promise to return soon, then Joe could break his. Joe thought of Patroclus, how he had disguised himself and stormed the battlefield in his vehemence to protect Achilles. Then he turned to Le Chiffre’s closet and arched an eyebrow. 

 

“Mr. Connor,” cooed the doorman, his pinstriped suit pressed and his eyes gazing over Joe with barely contained disdain. 

Joe stood with his back straight and his shoulders squared. He lifted his chin, freshly shaven, and did not wait for clearance before sauntering past the doorman. He spun in the foyer, and slipped his sleek black suit jacket from his shoulders, tossing it to the man, who was slightly shocked in the face now that he could asses Joe fully in the candlelight. 

He caught Joe’s jacket and eyed him suspiciously. “You are looking dapper this evening, Mr. Connor,” the doorman commented smoothly. 

Joe fought the urge to run a nervous hand through his hair, because he did not want to mess it up; he had borrowed Le Chiffre’s hair product, as well as one of his pristine black suits, gelling it smartly back and out of his eyes. Dapper, indeed. 

“Thank you,” Joe said, and then, “I do not require your assistance in finding my way.” 

The doorman nodded politely, and said, “Very good, sir. Enjoy your evening,” and then Joe was turning and walking down the all too familiar hallway, eyes straight ahead, until he reached the ceiling-tall double doors. 

The bass was already shaking his core, but he breathed deep, straightened Le Chiffre’s tie, and pushed. His polished shoes led him onto the battlefield, and he appraised it with supreme caution, before narrowing his eyes and heading, nonstop, to his ultimate destination. 

The aluminum fronted backdoor glimmered with pinks and reds and blues as the strobe lights spun their dizzying patterns over the club. Joe’s jaw clenched, a muscle twitching slightly, and then he knocked. 

The teacher braced himself, and when the door creaked open, he mustered all of his confidence, and waltzed inside, right past the mountain man who held the door. 

When his eyes adjusted to the sensibly lit, non-strobey room, Joe did not gasp his surprise, but tucked it away for later. There would be time to gasp later. Hopefully. Behind him, the huge man, which Joe could only assume was a bodyguard of some sort, closed the door, and he could make out the specific click of a lock that made a lump form in his throat, which he abruptly swallowed down. Joe hoped that the sheen of sweat gathering on his brow would go unnoticed as he gave the occupants of the backroom an easy smile.

Sitting around a long, rectangular table, was a group of impeccably dressed men, smoking cigars, swirling brandies in fine crystal glasses, and holding cards in gem-ringed fingers. Instantly, instinctively, Joe’s eyes found their way to his intended target. Sitting closest to the far wall, playing cards fanned out in his hand and inhaler set to the green-laid table in front of him, Le Chiffre was staring daggers at Joe. 

The other men in the room eyed the new arrival with interest, and Joe was extremely aware of his borrowed clothes. To stop his hands from fidgeting, he smoothed his palms over his hips. An awkward minute passed wherein Joe had absolutely no idea what he was doing or how next he would proceed. He had just decided to try and politely excuse himself when a deep, melodious voice pierced the stodgy silence. 

“Finally,” Le Chiffre said, Albanian accent dripping luxuriously as he curled a slender finger toward Joe. “I told you to be prompt.”

A wave of reserved laughter swept over the card table, and the man nearest Le Chiffre shook his head, understanding. “At least he’s pretty, eh?” he said, winking at the banker.

Le Chiffre pursed his lips, feigning disapproval as he, once more, crooked his finger at Joe to join him. “Thank god he is pretty,” he said, and with his eyes shining ominously, he said directly to Joe, “Come here.”

Joe went to him, walking around the table past the backs of other seated men until he reached Le Chiffre, who did not turn to look at him, but held out his free hand, the hand not holding his set of playing cards, and hooked it into Joe’s belt. He pulled Joe nearer, a possessive gesture that made a few of the other men snort with amused approval. Le Chiffre, eyes still focused forward, let his hand draw down Joe’s hip and over his thigh, reaching around to grip his buttocks. 

“Refill my drink,” Le Chiffre said, and although he was not turned to Joe, Joe knew the order was directed to him. Le Chiffre slapped his ass, hard, and then pushed him away. 

Joe stumbled slightly and then, having no other foreseeable options, did as he was told, seeking out the drink tray on the other side of the room. Trying not to let uncertainty seize his muscles, he scooped up a set of tongs and began filling an empty tumbler with ice cubes. Meanwhile, his mind was a blur of a million different thoughts. 

Now that he had attained his goal and found that Le Chiffre was not only unharmed and safe, but had been playing cards all day long, poker by the looks of it, Joe’s brain was offering up endless other questions. The greatest and most troublesome of which was ‘Why the hell had Le Chiffre left him all day to play poker in the back of some seedy secret club?’ Another frontrunner was, ‘Why is Le Chiffre treating me like some rentboy?’ 

He tipped the decanter filled with amber liquid and filled Le Chiffre’s glass until the ice twirled and chimed together. When he turned back to face the playing table, he noticed a man, twisted around on his chair, noticing him, or rather, noticing his backside. With a sharp inhale of breath that Joe tried to mask with a soft cough, he recognized the man as the mustached assailant from the bathroom, the one who had grabbed his arm and chased him across the dance floor. The one who had called him by his name, with a dangerous glint in his eyes. 

Joe smiled at him and walked slowly back to Le Chiffre, letting his hips sway slightly back and forth. If Le Chiffre wanted these backroom card sharks to think he was a hired boy, so be it. Joe could be a hired boy for Le Chiffre, and maybe, with luck, the mustached man licking his lips would not remember that he was really Joe Connor. It had been dark in the club, and Joe had been scruffy haired and lightly bearded, and his state of dress and demeanor had been much different. Perhaps the man did not recognize him at all.

As Joe returned to Le Chiffre’s side, he placed his hand on the man’s shoulder, gripping it lightly and, he hoped, discreetly. When he felt the broad palm press against the small of his back, it occurred to Joe that he had been a blustering, single-minded fool. Patroclus, his role model of the evening, had been killed, and Le Chiffre, multiple times, had warned Joe away from the club with the very same threat of death, or worse. In Joe’s wild attempt to secure in his mind that Le Chiffre was okay, he had quite stupidly gallivanted, to use Le Chiffre’s prophetic turn of phrase, straight into the monster’s maw, where he was now trapped and faced the serious threat of being swallowed whole. Or, Joe thought with panic, chewed slowly. 

“You’ll have to tell us where you found him, Le Chiffre,” said the mustached man, whose eyes were prowling over Joe hungrily. “He makes the rest of them pale in comparison,” he said, gesturing rudely to another body, willowy and raven haired, who Joe was only just noticing, leaned against the wall, a cigarette hanging from his pouty red lips. 

The hand at Joe’s back traveled down, to once again grab hold by the belt, and then Joe felt himself being tugged gently forward. “I’ll give you my source’s number,” Le Chiffre said teasingly, “though when we’ve finished this hand, I fear you will no longer possess the means to afford their product.”

The men around the table laughed, and Le Chiffre yanked at Joe’s belt, offering out his bent knee, an invitation. Joe did his best to sink seductively onto the offered knee, and Le Chiffre’s hand snaked around his waist, pulling him back to lean against his chest. 

“Let’s let the cards speak for themselves,” Mr. Mustache said. “Better yet, Le Chiffre, if you’re so confident in your hand, why don’t we up the stakes?”

Joe felt Le Chiffre’s body tense beneath his own, but the voice that responded was as cool and unbothered as ever. “What do you suggest?”

The wispy blond held his hand out behind his back, and the raven haired boy left his spot on the wall to stand behind him, smirking at Joe as grubby hands cupped him indecently. Joe blushed and turned his cheek, feeling Le Chiffre’s steady, brandy-perfumed breath flutter lightly over his skin. 

“How about a trade,” Mr. Mustache said with suggestively raised brows. “If I win, I get all the earnings and your boy.”

Joe’s eyes darted to Le Chiffre, who ignored him completely, his lips pulled into an easy smile as he studied his opponent. “And if I win?”

An indignant puff of air ruffled the blond mustache, and then the man said, “Then you get all the winnings and can have my boy.” The raven haired boy, the one who had thrown Joe into the crowd, the boy whose crescent moon marks were still scattered over Joe’s wrist, smiled at Le Chiffre, and Joe felt a wave of nausea. When Le Chiffre’s head nodded and he said, “Very well,” Joe nearly bolted, but Le Chiffre’s arm was tight around his waist, holding him still and stuck.

The other men around the table, apparently already folded from the game, looked on in interest. Mr. Mustache was the first to put down his hand, and Joe could not look, keeping his head turned into Le Chiffre’s neck. Impressed murmurs filled the room with a jaw clenching hush, and Joe fought to keep his breathing deep and controlled. It would not do to fall into a fit of panic now, and give himself away. He wasn’t Joe Connor, not now, not while he was sitting on Le Chiffre’s lap, a boy by the hour. He felt the motion as Le Chiffre laid down his own hand, felt the reassuring grip of his fingers against Joe’s midriff as he did. There was some hearty laughter around the table then, and a wolf whistle, and then Le Chiffre was standing, keeping his arm around Joe’s waist, not letting him move away. Not that Joe wanted to move away. 

A few men clapped Le Chiffre on the shoulder. Congratulations were delivered him, and Mr. Mustache shoved his raven haired pet toward them, a nasty sneer painted on his face. 

Joe breathed out a silent sigh of relief. Le Chiffre had won. 

His banker bent to collect his winnings, a generous pile of chips heaped high at the table’s center, and placed them in a case, hand never leaving Joe’s waist, but when Le Chiffre’s eyes strayed to his other prize, he smiled politely and shook his head. 

“I think I shall decline the honor,” Le Chiffre said kindly, and he let his hand cup around the curve of Joe’s ass. “My hands are too full as it is. Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said, and with no further attentions paid to the other players, he led Joe through the door, which the bodyguard was already holding open for them. 

When they exited the backroom, Le Chiffre’s hand slipped from Joe’s backside and took his hand instead, and with a quickened step, he stomped them agilely past the dancing horde and through the double doors. Joe had to practically jog at Le Chiffre’s side as he dragged him down the long, candlelit hall. When they reached the foyer, the doorman was standing with Joe’s suit jacket in hand. Le Chiffre snatched it from him and kept moving, pulling Joe out the front door of the building and down the stone steps. 

Mr. Driver began murmuring something in Russian to Le Chiffre, possibly pleas for forgiveness, as he had been the one to drive Joe to the club, but Le Chiffre merely waved him off with a flick of his wrist. Mr. Driver opened the limousine door for them, bowing submissively, and Le Chiffre shocked Joe by throwing him inside. 

Joe bounced against the white leather and scrambled out of the way as Le Chiffre slid in beside him. Mr. Driver shut the door and left them for the driver’s cubby, and Joe and Le Chiffre were alone. Joe opened his mouth to speak, but Le Chiffre glared at him with such venom that it shut Joe immediately up, and he watched with wide eyes as Le Chiffre fished the silver cased inhaler out of his pocket and, turning away from Joe, took two deep puffs of the Albuterol. 

Only after Le Chiffre had taken a few clearing breaths, in which Joe could still detect a slight wheeze, did Le Chiffre finally turn back to Joe. “Come here,” he said. 

Joe bit at his lower lip nervously, but he did as he was asked and slowly scooted across the seat until he was within arm’s reach of the man fuming with upset. As soon as he was close enough, Le Chiffre reached out and grabbed him, yanking him forward by the waist and pulling him flush to his side. He fisted a hand through Joe’s curls and pulled him backwards, so Joe’s back was lying across Le Chiffre’s thighs. 

“I wish I could say I was surprised to see you, where I told you I did not want you, for the third time this week, Mr. Connor,” Le Chiffre said, looming over Joe. 

Joe scowled at him and tried to struggle from the humiliating posture, but Le Chiffre’s fist was fastened tightly in his hair. “You told me you would be back soon,” Joe said, allowing the anger he felt to color his voice.

“You barged into the middle of my business and nearly cost me everything,” Le Chiffre was saying, his voice a gruff purr that had Joe’s heart racing. 

“You were playing cards!” Joe accused, not caring that he sounded like a child, saddened by his neglect. “I waited all day for you, worrying about you, and you were playing cards!”

Le Chiffre pulled, lifting Joe up and over so they were eye level and Joe was sitting in Le Chiffre’s lap. “You do not know how high the stakes of that game were, Mr. Connor. Do you think I would not have rather been with you today instead of in a pit of swine? And, once again, you have disobeyed me and placed yourself in the utmost danger.” 

Joe was no longer struggling against him, but pressing, pushing himself forward into Le Chiffre’s grip. “I’m not sorry,” Joe said, surprised by the breathlessness already claiming his voice. He could feel Le Chiffre stiff beneath his suit pants, and he rolled against that swelling spot, his voice morphing into a helpless pant as Le Chiffre tugged at his hair and bent down to bite his exposed throat. 

“I will teach you to be sorry,” Le Chiffre whispered, sharp teeth scraping against his sensitive skin. 

The rest of the limousine ride was agony, Joe trying to rub against Le Chiffre only to find his hands grabbed and his hips restrained. When they finally pulled in front of the hotel, Le Chiffre did not wait for Mr. Driver to open their door. He slammed it open himself, dragging Joe out behind him. They crossed the lobby with haste, and Joe groaned as he was pushed into the elevator. They rode the lift in silence, Le Chiffre’s expression set and smoldering, and when they finally reached their floor, he grabbed Joe by the belt and pulled him into his arms. Then he placed his hands around Joe’s waist and heaved, lifting the teacher up and over his shoulder. 

“Le Chiffre!” Joe yelled, clawing at Le Chiffre’s back as he was carried down the hotel hall. Le Chiffre held him with one hand as he set the key to the lock, and then the door was swinging open and they entered the room, Le Chiffre kicking the door shut behind them. 

Joe laughed, startled, as he was thrown onto the bed, bouncing so violently he thought he might fall to the floor, but then Le Chiffre was on top of him, knees on either side of Joe’s waist, fixing him roughly against the mattress. 

Le Chiffre’s breathing was strained, and he cursed, pulling out his inhaler again, and this time he did not look away as he put it in his mouth and sucked. Joe watched, rapt on his back, as perfectly bowed lips closed around the silver mouthpiece. A puff, and then Le Chiffre inhaled deeply. He discarded the inhaler with a toss and it fell to the floor. 

Joe brought his hands up to feel Le Chiffre’s chest. “Are you alright?” he asked, worried, because Le Chiffre’s pulse was pounding and his breaths were short and discernibly wheezy. 

Le Chiffre grasped Joe’s hands and held them above his head on the bed, bringing his face low to Joe’s. “What would you have done if I had lost the hand, Mr. Connor?” Le Chiffre asked, grinding his hips down against Joe’s, pulling a gasp from the younger man. “Would you have asked if he was alright as he grunted on top of you?”

Joe did not struggle against Le Chiffre’s weight, nor did he worry at his sharp-tongued words. He looked at him carefully, looked into the eyes so close to his own, seeing the pain there, and the worry. “You wouldn’t have let him take me,” Joe said softly beneath him. 

Le Chiffre’s hands tightened around Joe’s wrists and he shut his eyes. His breathing was erratic and short, and Joe recognized himself in the signs, and it dawned on him with breathtaking amazement that Le Chiffre was having a panic attack. 

“Le Chiffre,” he whispered at the man huffing painfully above him. “It’s okay. I’m sorry,” he told him, trying to make his voice smooth and calm, as Le Chiffre had done for him so many times before. Le Chiffre’s hands lessened their hold on his wrists, and Joe brought his arms down and wrapped them around Le Chiffre’s back, pressing him so there was not a part of Joe that he did not touch. “I’m here with you,” Joe said, running his hands across Le Chiffre’s back and over his ass, pressing him down as he thrust up. Joe’s eyes closed in pleasure as their erections brushed together, and he cursed the layers of sleek black suit between them. 

“I might not,” Le Chiffre breathed against Joe’s mouth, “have been able to stop him.” 

And Joe knew he was right, knew that his thoughtlessness had put them both at risk, and Le Chiffre’s rapid pulse was because of him, for him. 

“Kiss me,” Joe said, his lips touching the side of Le Chiffre’s panting mouth. He remembered how his own panic had fallen away when Le Chiffre had kissed him in the hallway. 

Le Chiffre opened his eyes, and a droplet of red gathered at the edge of his gaze. Joe touched his face, his fingers tracing his finely cut cheekbones and smoothing beneath his scarred, milky white eye, where his thumb collected the bloody tear, wiping it away. 

And then, before Le Chiffre could protest, Joe grabbed Le Chiffre’s face and held him still and kissed him, hard and claiming, a bittersweet anchor that parted Le Chiffre’s lips, and Joe greedily swallowed the moan that escaped them. 

But Le Chiffre was still a cloister of tension above him, and with a bout of stealthy finesse, Joe rolled them, slipping the older man to his back and straddling himself atop. Le Chiffre stared at him, his chest like a rollercoaster of uneven breaths, and Joe pressed his open palms against Le Chiffre, tightening his knees over his waist so he could not escape. 

“Breathe,” Joe commanded in his most demanding tone, the tone he had used on his students often enough, and the thought made him smile. Le Chiffre turned his head away, and Joe rolled his hips against him, summoning back his eyes. “Breathe,” he said again with another forceful hip roll, rocking his hardness against Le Chiffre’s, slowly, so slowly. 

Le Chiffre breathed in, out, in, as Joe rocked their bodies together. When Le Chiffre’s wheeze was gone, and his breaths were deeper, more substantial, he closed his eyes and laid his broad hands over Joe’s thighs, then spread them around to Joe’s curved back, un-tucking the black shirt he wore and feeling beneath. 

Joe sighed at the touch of Le Chiffre’s hands against his naked skin, hot and firm, and when those hands traveled down to grasp his backside and shove Joe harder against him, Joe straightened and let his head fall back, eyes closed and lips parting on the name so heady on his tongue, “Le Chiffre.” And then Joe felt himself being brought low, and Le Chiffre’s lips found his, and they kissed, their tongues colliding in perfect rhythm, Joe’s hips being guided in Le Chiffre’s hands to grind back and forth over the erection pushing against its fine-fabric restraints. 

With nimble fingers, Joe freed the belt from his own waist and cast it to the floor, then he attended to the suit pants, both Le Chiffre’s and his own, which were, comically, also technically Le Chiffre’s. He moved quickly, so quickly their bodies were only separated for the scant time it took for Joe to slip out of his slacks and also pull Le Chiffre’s free, wasting no time and freeing Le Chiffre’s cock from his black cotton briefs in the same peeling of clothes. Joe stepped from his, admittedly silly, silk boxers and then climbed over Le Chiffre, who waited for him with hooded eyes and bitten lips. Joe smiled as he sat astride him, hooking his leg over Le Chiffre’s bared middle. The panic was disappeared from Le Chiffre’s expression, and the only thing Joe saw in his eyes was pure need. Le Chiffre needed Joe, he ached for him. Joe stroked the man’s cheek, his fingers grazing across the godly carving of cheekbones, and then he bowed low, kissing the scars above Le Chiffre’s eye, and he whispered faintly, truthfully, full-heartedly, “You will have me.”

Le Chiffre’s desire raged against Joe, his hands flying up to tear at the buttons, too many buttons, of his own shirt resting over Joe’s smooth chest. With a growl, he ripped the buttons open and pushed the shirt away. Joe’s tie remained momentarily, long enough for Le Chiffre to grab him by it and tussle the younger man to his back on the bed. Joe laughed with surprise as the tie was slipped over his head and thrown to join the increasingly high pile of garments on the floor beside their bed, Le Chiffre’s own shirt and tie fast to follow. 

And then they were nothing but flesh and sinew and beating hearts. Joe arched from the bed, Le Chiffre slipping his hand to his back, and then down to rub the soft skin of Joe’s ass, following the rounded curves, fingers tracing carefully down the sensitive stretch until they rested upon the spot where Joe would open to him. 

Le Chiffre hesitated, and Joe pushed against his fingers, groaning his encouragement. Le Chiffre buried his face against Joe’s neck, mouthing wet kisses as his fingers massaged over the tight ring of muscle. He waited until Joe was sighing his name, over and over, insistent and desperate, before he withdrew for as long as it took to grab the small tube from his bedside drawer, right on top of the pocket bible, and then, his fingers wet and warm with lube, he pushed.

Joe lost his breath for a moment, the initial breach of two fingers a shock, a happy shock, and he set his nails into Le Chiffre’s back, eyelids fluttering as he stretched around the fingers, around Le Chiffre. 

“God,” Joe breathed, his lips kissing every inch of Le Chiffre’s skin he could reach, as the older man’s fingers fanned inside of him and curled. When they rubbed against the tender nub of Joe’s prostate, he cried out as the pleasuring tremors shook his frame, and he thrust his hips up, his cock leaking and red and sliding slick across Le Chiffre’s stomach. “You,” he demanded, grinding himself down on Le Chiffre’s hand. “You, please.”

Le Chiffre slid his fingers free, and Joe whimpered against him, greeting his lips in a kiss as the man above him hooked a hand beneath Joe’s knee and pulled it up, spreading him wider. Le Chiffre’s other hand spread slick over his thick length, and then he lined himself up against Joe. 

“Le Chiffre,” Joe urged, and Le Chiffre, agonizingly slow, broke through the dizzying hotness. 

Joe stretched wide around him, and it hurt, but it was wonderful pain, and Joe grabbed Le Chiffre’s ass and pushed him deeper inside, until he was buried to the hilt, and Le Chiffre was filling him utterly and completely. He shuddered at the divine girth and heat of the man inside him, and when Le Chiffre’s mouth sought his, he kissed him, languid tongues matching the slow thrusts Le Chiffre began into Joe. He pulled out slowly, almost all the way, and then he pushed back, just as slow, thrusting hard at the end and making Joe cry out every time. 

Le Chiffre quickened his pace, filling Joe with shallow, driving thrusts, seeking Joe’s sensitive spot and finding it with ease. He pushed against it repetitively, until Joe was mindless and near thrashing beneath him. And then Le Chiffre’s breathing was ragged and he was pounding into him, and Joe felt entirely outside of himself as he rode out his pleasure, worshipping every thrust, every stretch, every blinding soar that Le Chiffre filled him with. They were sweaty and pushing together, like they could never be close enough, despite every surface of skin sliding together with delicious friction. 

When Le Chiffre’s hips began to tremble and jerk, Joe let himself go, releasing thick streaks across his own chest as he called out Le Chiffre’s name. Le Chiffre held tight to Joe, wrapping his arms around his back and pulling them both to sitting, Joe’s thighs hooking around Le Chiffre’s waist. Le Chiffre held Joe’s hips and moved him up and down over his cock until he came, hard, yanking Joe’s head down to steal his lips with his own as he emptied himself inside. 

Joe collapsed against him, grinding his hips slowly, milking every drop of Le Chiffre’s pleasure, until they were both too exhausted to move, and then they just sat there, sticky and breathless, two beautifully spent creatures, chests rising and falling together, like a single wild thing. 

After their hearts had slowed their gallop, and Le Chiffre began to soften inside Joe, he gently lifted the younger man from his lap. Joe hissed at the sudden emptiness, but Le Chiffre appeased him by laying them both on the mattress, directing Joe’s damp and curly head to rest against his chest. 

Joe let his fingers tangle in the thick splay of silver chest hair, and breathed deep of the man beneath him, scenting him, memorizing him. 

“Fuck me,” Joe laughed, and when he felt Le Chiffre’s chest vibrating with a chuckle, his lips spread into a ridiculous grin. “You know, I think I’m conditioning myself to react to panic attacks with an insatiable hard on.”

Le Chiffre arched his pale brow, his hands skimming over Joe’s arm. “Insatiable?” he asked.

Joe lifted his head to look at him seriously. “Oh, I’m sated,” he said, and then with a mischievous smirk, he added, “For now.”

Le Chiffre grunted his approval and ran his fingers through Joe’s hair. It almost brought a purr to Joe, the simple, easy feeling of it, of them, wrapped around one another. It was a perfect moment. 

So, of course, Joe had to have a go at ruining it. “Your asthma is anxiety induced?” he asked casually, his fingers drawing circles over Le Chiffre’s muscular chest, trailing down the soft line of hair down to his stomach, where he flattened his palm and pressed lightly, coaxingly. It said a lot that, even though Le Chiffre tensed beneath him, he still responded, after clearing his throat. 

“Yes,” he said, and Joe smiled, because his voice had not lost its warmth. It gave Joe the confidence to continue.

“May I ask you about your eye?” he asked, trying to keep the anxious tremble from his voice. 

To his extreme surprise, Le Chiffre shifted beneath him, moving to his side so they faced one another on the bed. Le Chiffre placed his hand over Joe’s and wound their fingers together. “You may, as they are all related.”

Joe felt his rising eyebrows wrinkle his forehead. “Oh?” he asked, curious. 

Le Chiffre brought Joe’s hand to his lips and kissed the tip of his finger. He touched the bandage still wrapped around the palm and clucked his tongue. “I need to redress this,” he said, and Joe laughed. 

“Redress it later,” he pleaded.

A small, considering smile lit up Le Chiffre’s face, and he kissed Joe’s hand again before settling and pressing it against his chest. “Years ago, so long I hardly recall it, I lived in an internment camp, in Albania. Another war, another time. I was very young and forced to work, as were we all.”

Joe did not speak, only listened, letting his hand respond for him by tightening its grip on Le Chiffre’s. The banker took a breath, not because he was upset, but, perhaps, because he had never told this story before, and was unsure of how to string his words together. 

“I broke rocks. Tedious busy work meant to render us exhausted. And one day, there was an accident,” he said, and he smiled slightly. “I was lucky to not lose it,” he said, and Joe knew he was speaking of his eye, milky and scarred, and prone to tears of blood. 

“Can you see out of it?” Joe asked. 

“I can see well enough,” he answered, and Joe laughed at his quintessentially Le Chiffre response. “The injury bought me my freedom, when I was thought useless and irrelevant, and thrown into the Albanian wilds to die.” Joe’s eyes widened and he moved in closer. Le Chiffre wet his lips and continued. “I was found, obviously, and received the medical attention I required by kindly strangers, who gave me safe passage to Paris.”

“And then you became Le Chiffre,” Joe said, mesmerized by the man beside him, whose heart beat so elegantly beneath Joe’s hand. 

Le Chiffre nodded. “I escaped my saviors, afraid of becoming a belonging, a pet someone owned. I lost myself in the city of Paris, and found Le Chiffre.” He brought up Joe’s hand once more to his lips and brushed kisses against his fingertips. “The rest is quite dull. I suffered with the panic attacks, but they did not control me, not until I met a hapless schoolteacher on a dusty road in Rwanda, of course.”

Joe laughed, pressing Le Chiffre’s lips out of sorts with a finger. Le Chiffre nipped at it and then allowed the gentle, roaming touches against his lips. “Of course,” Joe said. “Would Jean Duran have liked Joe Connor?” he asked quietly.

Le Chiffre’s eyes narrowed for a moment, and then relaxed. He pulled Joe close and leaned on his elbow, looking down at the teacher. 

“Jean Duran would not have known what to do with you, Mr. Connor,” he said. 

Joe smiled and brushed back the hair that fell over Le Chiffre’s eyes. “But you know what to do with me, don’t you, Le Chiffre?” he asked, quirking his brow. 

“I believe I might.”


	11. Chapter 11

It was definitely not a dream. 

That’s what Joe thought as he rested on his side, and his eyes soaked up the man beside him. Le Chiffre’s expression was softer in sleep, and his hair was straight and disheveled and dusting across his brow. Joe’s fingers ached to touch him, to smooth the silky strands and pet along the angular planes and ridges of the sleeping sculpture, but the sight of Le Chiffre at rest was far too sweet to disturb, so Joe just watched. He smiled as Le Chiffre’s cupid bow lips sucked in serene puffs of air, and then Joe stifled a laugh as Le Chiffre blew them out through his straight-bridged nose with the smallest of rumbling snores. 

He was a marvel. 

When Joe stretched his legs and lifted himself carefully from the bed, he winced at the soreness, but it was entirely welcome. And as Joe walked to the washroom with a slight limp, he could still feel Le Chiffre, where he had stretched him wide and wanton, and when Joe leaned over the sink to splash his face with water, he blushed when he met his reflection. For once, it did not hurt to look. 

Joe gazed at the pink cheeked man in the mirror. After two nights in a row of heavy, uninterrupted sleep, the dark circles beneath his eyes were less prominent, and not only were the whites whiter, but the blue of his irises were sky-bright and clear, sparkling from the memory of Le Chiffre kissing his neck, bracing his hips, fucking him soundly. Joe bit his lip in sympathy as he thought on the teeth that scraped against his flesh, Le Chiffre biting possessively, Joe’s back arching as he rode the man beneath him to completion. 

A boisterous snore broke Joe’s reverie, and he craned his neck to spy on the beautiful, naked culprit. Joe was smitten and happy. And hungry, he realized, putting a hand to his stomach as it grumbled loudly. Then he had a thought. He would save the hotel employees from trekking to their room and venture out to fetch something himself. Joe smiled at the notion. He would wake Le Chiffre up with the aroma of coffee and baked goods, and after he had seen them both fed, he would drag him into the shower and scrub him clean, only to press him against the tiles and make him dirty again. 

It was, quite possibly, the best idea he’d ever had, and after tiptoeing into his own hotel room and pulling on his corduroy slacks and a soft white t-shirt, and shrugging a cozy grey sweater overtop, Joe planted a feather-light kiss on Le Chiffre’s temple, and left him sleepy and snorey in his den of blankets. 

 

The ever present and sensationally helpful chauffer was already waiting outside the limousine with the door open, straight white teeth glistening in the golden Parisian sunshine. He tipped his hat to Joe, who stopped in front of him, overcome with the spirit of amiability. The day, he felt deep down in his bones, would be one of those rare, blissful days, because it would be spent with Le Chiffre. 

“Good morning, Mr. Driver,” Joe said, beaming at the chauffer. 

“Good morning, Mr. Connor,” the man responded, equally brimming. Joe wondered if he had his own Le Chiffre tucked away somewhere in the city, and if he’d had the sort of night Joe had. He hoped so, for the friendly driver’s sake. Everyone should be so lucky. 

“I’m going to go hunt down some breakfast,” Joe said. “Would you like anything?” 

The driver waved a gloved hand dismissively, shaking his head with a laugh that borderlined on a guffaw. “Allow me the pleasure of driving you, sir. I know a place that makes Le Chiffre’s favorite croissants, but it’s a bit too far for walking. I can have you there and back again in a jiffy.” 

Joe liked the idea of stretching his legs and enjoying a pleasant walk in the fresh spring air, but he liked even better the idea of returning to Le Chiffre ‘in a jiffy,’ so he nodded his acquiescence. “That would be lovely. Thank you, Mr. Driver.”

“It is no trouble at all, Mr. Connor,” replied the chauffer, and when Joe had ducked his head and slid into the limousine, Mr. Driver closed the door and strutted to the driver’s seat. He tugged at the wrists of his white gloves, pulling them firmly over his spindly fingers and, with a smirk, turned the key in the ignition and pulled the limousine away from the hotel curb. 

 

Joe rolled down his window on the ride to the bakery, letting the wind ruffle his hair and drift between his outstretched fingers. The feeling of perfection lingered within, and even when Mr. Driver parked the limo in front of an obscure, windowless building, Joe did not fret. It was no shock to him that Le Chiffre’s favorite place for croissants would be hidden, like the club, a secret only known to the elitists of croissant connoisseurs. It sparked laughter, and Joe was still chuckling softly when the chauffer opened the door for him and helped him out with an extended hand. 

Joe took the gloved offering of assistance and took in the building with interest. “I feel like I might need to know the password to get into this place,” he said with a cocked eyebrow. 

The chauffer laughed and shook his head. “No, sir, it’s not as secret as all that. Just head in through the front door, and you’ll be in the shop.”

“Alright, then, can I get you something, Mr. Driver?”

“No, no, I’ve eaten, sir, but I thank you for the offer,” said the chauffer. 

Joe nodded, still smiling, constantly smiling, and walked up to the front door with an irrefutable bounce in his step. He turned the handle and entered the bakery. 

It took a moment for Joe’s eyes to adjust to the dim lighting, but when they finally did, there was a boy standing in front of him, raven haired with a flashing, cruel grin. Joe only had time to squint confusedly before something blunt struck the back of his head, and he crumpled, unconscious, to the floor.

 

Not actually a bakery, then, Joe thought as his eyes cracked open. His head throbbed, and when he moved to touch his fingers to his scalp to check for blood he could feel oozing down his neck, a rough material scraped the skin of his wrists. It was a rope, and it pinched him as he twisted his hands fruitlessly against the binding. 

Joe tried to assess the new state of his reality with a calm mind, but his heart was clamoring, his pulse ushering blood through his veins with supercharged speed, and already he could feel his lungs straining in his tightening chest, his throat clenching as he tried to suck in air. Panic was gripping him, and there was no Le Chiffre to kiss him better. 

He opened his eyes wider, seeking his surroundings, but the lights were low, and he felt his captor before he saw him, as an arm swung in front of him and backhanded Joe, hard, across the face. The blow sent him sprawling, crashing sideways onto the ground. His head banged against a cool surface, concrete, and Joe’s legs were bent up and restrained against a chair. He squirmed, coughing on the blood that filled his mouth, his lip split with the hard-hitting hand, and found he could hardly move. He was thoroughly tied up, wrapped up, in the seat of a sideways chair. He spit blood to the ground with a groan and tried to keep his pounding brain in the present, even as a red haze began to filter through the edges.

“I wouldn’t have pegged you as a spitter, Mr. Connor,” said a voice, a familiar voice that prickled the hairs on the back of Joe’s neck. 

Joe squinted in the darkness and made out a shiny pair of shoes in front of his face. The shoes’ owner squatted down, and thin lips grinned past a wispy blond mustache. He laughed at Joe’s eyes as they widened in recognition. 

“There we are,” Mr. Mustache said in greasy tones. “It is good to be remembered.” His grubby hand grabbed Joe’s chin and squeezed. “Do you think Le Chiffre will remember you?”

Joe tried to get away, shaking his head, but the hand grasped him firmly and laughed at his struggle, finally releasing Joe and slapping his face with a sharp sting that brought tears to his eyes.

A cackle of laughter from another person in the room. “Hit him again, Randolph,” said the raven haired boy. “He could do with some roughening up of that pretty face.”

The mustached man, Randolph, stood up, paying a kick to Joe’s stomach as he did, and the boy’s laughter rang out, echoing in the expanse of the room that Joe vaguely guessed to be a warehouse of some kind. He strongly doubted, at this point, that he would be offered any croissants, and his mind went back to Le Chiffre, who was most likely still snoozing in bed, with no idea of what was happening to Joe. The thought squeezed his heart, and he gasped, tasting more coppery blood on his tongue. Suddenly, he remembered the chauffer, and he scowled as he thought of poor Mr. Driver, waiting for him outside, possibly captured and bound, as well. 

“What have you done with Mr. Driver?” Joe demanded with a sputter, his voice weak. 

Randolph and his boy both laughed, and then a third voice presented itself, the thick Russian accent curling around his speech like a fur stole. “I’m well, Mr. Connor. Kind of you to ask,” he said. 

Joe groaned, defeat looming like a threatening shadow in his mind. “Le Chiffre will find you out, Driver,” he rasped.

“As soon as he wakes up, yes, I’m sure,” answered Randolph. “In fact, we’re counting on it. But Mr. Driver here thinks he may have reason to sleep extra soundly this morning.”

Joe lashed against the ropes, but it was no use. The others laughed mockingly at his attempts, and Randolph kicked him again, swift and sharp in the ribs. Joe coughed, more blood spilling from his mouth and dribbling down his cheek to puddle on the floor. 

“The real question, I think,” continued Randolph, his steps echoing as he walked over to slip his arm around his boy’s waist, “is whether or not you’ll want to see Le Chiffre by the time he comes to rescue you.”

Joe tried to clear his throat, and when he spoke, his words sounded rusty and tired. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, remembering with a shiver how Le Chiffre had warned him this might happen, that he had enemies everywhere, that Joe could be used as leverage against him. And now it had happened, and it was Joe’s fault, because he was uselessly stupid. A bakery in a windowless building. Honestly. His only small comfort was that natural selection was rearing its ugly head, and that maybe, probably, the world would be a better place without selfish idiots like Joe running amok, abandoning schoolchildren to slaughter, luring kind men to their deaths. He was a siren, an evil incubus, a harbinger of bloody death and destruction. He had sustained a rather bad head injury and wasn’t thinking clearly. The cool grey flooring flashed sandy and red-stained, and he blinked. 

“I think he’s confused. Maybe you should explain it to him,” said the boy, and Joe could practically hear Randolph’s smile. 

“Which part should I explain?” he asked with a ponderous tone. “Mr. Connor, how did you meet Le Chiffre?”

It took him a moment to muddle through the man’s question, and when he did, it brought a furrow to Joe’s brow. “None of your business,” Joe spat. He would not tell them anything. It would do him no good. It would do Le Chiffre no good. 

“See, I think you met him in Africa, when he was on a gun run for his employers. Does that sound right to you, Mr. Driver?” Randolph asked.

“I think that sounds right,” came the thick Russian response. 

The words bounced around Joe’s brain, but didn’t seem to stick. He strained his neck, trying to look up at the faces surrounding him, but it was so dark in the warehouse, he could hardly see. Or maybe, he thought sickly, he had been hit so hard in the back of the head, his vision had dimmed. “Le Chiffre,” he managed quietly, weakly, “is a banker.”

More laughter. “On occasion,” agreed Randolph. “And on occasion, he smuggles weapons into countries to the highest bidder. Your genocide, Mr. Connor, who do you think supplied all those guns? All of those machetes? Le Chiffre did. The school, the children you taught, were all killed with the weapons that your beloved Le Chiffre sold to them.”

A wave of nausea swept through him, and Joe gagged, heaving against his restraints, his ribs throbbing with pain. “No,” he said, trembling and choking on the words. “No, that’s not true.” But the truth was already sinking into Joe’s memory. He shut his eyes and saw the dusty road, the spike that had sent the UN van crashing, Le Chiffre appearing out of nowhere with his caravan of black vans. He had been conducting business, he had said. He kidnapped the UN guards, but he was a banker. Joe thrashed against the ground, kicking up the dust of the Rwandan road. It was stained with blood. A road of carnage. 

Le Chiffre had never said precisely what he had been doing in Rwanda, and he had had a private plane waiting once his business had concluded. Once the genocide had begun. Once he had completed his business. 

Joe balked, as though he had been struck. If it were true, and he knew, he knew it was true, that meant that Christopher, Marie, the hundreds of others all trapped inside those gates, the baby in the grass, his mother…the gun that had been shoved into Joe’s face, it had been placed in that man’s hands by Le Chiffre. He couldn’t breathe, not with the blood that was beginning to pool and rise, covering Joe’s mouth, snaking into his nostrils, leaking into his eyes, sticky, tar-like blood and grime. The blood of his students and his friends, it was all over him. And it was all over Le Chiffre. 

“I don’t think he was expecting to hear that,” Mr. Driver commented, and Joe could hardly hear him. His ears were full and thick, stuffed with blood. Joe’s mouth gaped helplessly, striving for air that wasn’t there. 

“Let’s see if he was expecting this, then,” Randolph said, his voice far away, like a curtain of rain seen from a distance. “Did you think Le Chiffre saved you out of the kindness of his heart, Mr. Connor?”

The raven haired boy was laughing, and it sounded like screams to Joe, like a baby’s screams, like Joe’s helpless scream as he watched behind the chain link fence as the baby was heard, hunted, and killed. Tears streamed down Joe’s face and he knew they must be red, red like Le Chiffre’s bloody tears. 

“You are not a lover on a trip to Paris. You are, and have always been, Le Chiffre’s hostage,” Randolph was saying as Joe writhed on the floor at his feet. 

“No,” Joe gasped. “I could have left. He wanted me to go.” He felt another kick in his stomach and cried out, in and out of lucidity, in the warehouse one moment, in Africa the next. Confused, sick, blood and sweat in equal measure. 

“He made you think that leaving was an option, I’m sure,” said Randolph. “He is a fucking genius, after all.”

Joe shook his head and it felt like his skull was full of nails. A hand was suddenly fisting through his hair and jerking up his head, pulling Joe off his side to sit straight up in the chair. The new position dizzied him, but the fist held him fast. He could see the face in front of him only because it was so close, too close. The wispy mustache fluttered with every foul breath that Randolph took. Joe spit blood at that face, earning a vicious slap that sent a hot sting of whiplash through his neck.

“He kept you longer than those UN guards, true,” Randolph said between clenched teeth, wiping away Joe’s bloody spit from his cheek with the back of his sleeve. “But only long enough to have you spreading those sweet legs of yours. His plan was always to get a pretty penny for you; everyone wanted a piece of the angel-faced teacher all over the news, his employers especially. He would have brought you to them and organized the trade, and then you would have been gone, a little more cultured and a lot more fucked.”

The hand released him, and Joe’s head jerked back, the force of his recoil almost enough to knock him backwards in the chair. “Why are you doing this?” Joe whispered. He had not the strength to put the venom in his words that he felt aching in his chest. 

“Two birds, Mr. Connor, one stone,” answered Randolph. “Le Chiffre comes here to save you, and I kill him. Then I ransom you back to your precious motherland myself. You’re the stone in this scenario by the way,” he finished, and Joe shut his eyes before the fist connected with his jaw and swarmed his vision in absolute darkness.

 

The feel of cool concrete rubbing hot friction down his sides roused him. Joe was being dragged by the bindings on his wrist, but he was no longer tied to the chair. His legs, however, were snared tightly in the rough rope. His shirt was riding up and his skin burned as he was pulled carelessly across the floor of the warehouse. 

He heard the creaking of a door, and then he was being thrown, his body released to roll and slam against a wall. The little light he had before disappeared as the door slammed shut, and Joe was alone in a small, pitch black room. 

He brought his hands, tied together, to touch the back of his head, which he could only just reach. His hair felt matted and sticky with blood. Had Joe been able to see, he would have seen the room spinning about him. He set his head back to the floor and let the flood of oblivion draw him under. He did not want to be awake. 

 

“But you know what to do with me, don’t you, Le Chiffre?” Joe asked, quirking his brow.

“I believe I might,” Le Chiffre said, bending his head low to kiss Joe’s open mouth. He hummed happily against Joe, pressing long and steady against his lips in an unbreakable kiss. 

Joe’s hands wrapped around to hug him near and keep him. He wanted to feel his heart beating against his own, where it belonged, always. Joe broke away only to breathe and bent his head to nuzzle Le Chiffre’s neck, breathing in his scent. When the other man ran his fingers softly through his curls, he sighed. 

“Stay with me,” Joe whispered in his ear. 

Le Chiffre brushed the backs of his knuckles over Joe’s cheek. “I have no business tomorrow. I can stay with you all day,” he said with a pleased and sleepy grin. 

Joe brushed a kiss against Le Chiffre’s jaw, and then leaned away to meet his gaze. “No,” came Joe’s soft reply. “Not just tomorrow.”

His banker’s eyebrows raised, only a little, only enough for Joe to tell, and then his face relaxed, and the edges of his eyes crinkled. Le Chiffre rested his forehead against Joe’s. “No,” he agreed with warming cheeks, a blush so similar to Joe’s it brought a knowing smile to both their faces. “Not just tomorrow.”

 

Joe’s eyes opened, and his lids were sticky with tears, old and new. A bright light clicked on, bitter yellow fluorescents that buzzed loudly, almost as loud as the rush of blood through Joe’s eardrums. He saw the shoes approaching him, and then the boy bent down to look into Joe’s face. 

Raven locks fell over dark eyes. Joe stared at him piteously, and a hand came up to strike across his face. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” the boy said. “You aren’t better than me.” He looked for a moment like he wanted to say more, but he did not speak again, only stood, and after sending a final kick into Joe’s side, swept from the room. The door slammed shut behind him. The room still buzzed from the lights the boy had forgotten to turn off, and Joe shut his eyes against their blare and wept.

 

Le Chiffre’s hands were warm as they cupped Joe’s face, and he grinned up at his banker. They were sprawled together on the hotel bed, and Le Chiffre was kissing his forehead, and then he was running his hands all over Joe’s body. Joe tried to lift his head from the pillow, but it felt so heavy. He lifted his arms, wanting to scrape his nails down Le Chiffre’s back, but his hands felt stuck. He furrowed his brow, confused. 

“Le Chiffre, I can’t move,” he murmured to the man above him, laughing. 

But Le Chiffre did not laugh. Le Chiffre’s face was grim and his mouth was a thin line and his jaw, his beautiful, strong jaw was clenched. And it only made Joe laugh harder. 

“I’m here with you,” Le Chiffre said, and Joe arched his back from the covers, which were very hard. 

“I should call the concierge and complain,” Joe said, and then there was a loud noise from down the hall that made Joe jump and Le Chiffre scowl. “We have the noisiest neighbors,” Joe commented.

Le Chiffre set one of his lovely, large hands around Joe’s waist, and the other he tucked behind Joe’s neck, and then he lifted him, carrying Joe like a bride. 

“I’m going to get you out of here,” Le Chiffre said, and then Joe was being shifted around in strong arms, as Le Chiffre repositioned him, swinging him across his shoulders. Joe was baffled and overcome with a lightness of head that confused his vision. From his upside down vantage point behind Le Chiffre’s back, he thought he imagined a slate-grey pistol in the banker’s hand. Then Le Chiffre was running, his hand holding Joe tight across his shoulder, and Joe heard yelling and unmistakable pops. 

Joe knew that sound. 

Gunfire. 

He wasn’t in the hotel with Le Chiffre. He was in Rwanda, bodies were strewn everywhere. He jostled against Le Chiffre as Le Chiffre ran, and Joe clutched at the man’s suit jacket for something, anything to hold on to, and he saw that his hands were bound, and then Le Chiffre lifted his gun and there was that terrible noise again, and a scream ripped from Joe’s throat, but Le Chiffre did not stop. 

Joe’s eyes saw the body as they passed over it. Mr. Driver had a bullet in his head, and Joe knew he wasn’t in Rwanda, he was in the warehouse, he was in Paris, and Le Chiffre had come for him.  
Another gunshot and more yelling, and Le Chiffre was setting Joe down, leaning him against a stack of old wooden crates, and Joe stared at the crates, awestruck. They were so much like the ones in the UN van. 

More gunshots, and then Le Chiffre was back at Joe’s side, untying the ropes around Joe’s wrists and legs. He pulled him to his feet and slung Joe’s arm over his shoulder. 

“Can you walk, Mr. Connor?” he asked, and Joe was shaking, too stunned to move his legs. 

He stuttered over his words, and they were thick in his mouth, soaked in blood. “Mr. Mustache,” he said, and he shook his head, because that wasn’t quite right, was it? And shaking his head wasn’t right either, and Joe was swaying in Le Chiffre’s arms. 

“Randolph is dead,” Le Chiffre growled. “Everyone who took you from me is dead. We’re getting out of here right now. We’ll leave Paris, and go anywhere you wish.”

Le Chiffre supported most of Joe’s weight as they began to walk, Joe staggering, dizzy and nauseous, but he could see the door now, see the exit sign above it shining neon red. 

POP. 

Joe jerked back at the sound, and crouched to his knees, out of Le Chiffre’s hold, and at the same time Le Chiffre lifted his gun and aimed. When Joe looked up through his curtain of curls, he saw the boy with the raven hair dropping to the floor, a shocked little look on his face. The blood from Joe’s dreams pooled out around him. Dead. 

Le Chiffre turned back to Joe. And then the gun slipped from his fingers and fell to the ground. 

“Are you alright?” Joe asked, worried. 

Le Chiffre knelt beside him, his eyes huge and horrified. Joe’s head was spinning, and he reached out his hands to touch Le Chiffre’s face, but Le Chiffre was lowering him down to the ground and pressing his hands over Joe’s stomach. 

“Le Chiffre, what – ,” he began, but then he saw, through his hazy, muddled mind, the blood seeping through Le Chiffre’s fingers. He gasped. “I didn’t feel it,” Joe said. “It didn’t hurt.”

Le Chiffre ripped off his suit jacket, and his inhaler went scattering across the concrete, and then he was pulling off his shirt and pushing it down against Joe’s abdomen, a compress to stave off the blood flow where Joe had been shot. His hands were red and shaking, and Joe watched him hovering over him, watched the tears in his eyes, one stream clear and the other as scarlet as the life oozing from Joe’s guts. 

“Le Chiffre,” Joe whispered, and he lifted a weak hand to rest over Le Chiffre’s. His eyes fluttered shut. 

“No,” Le Chiffre ordered. “Stay awake. Stay with me,” he said, and Joe drifted in and out of consciousness, until a word drew him to alertness. “Joe.”

Joe opened his eyes. Le Chiffre’s breaths were wheezy and shallow, but with every one, he said, “Joe. Joe. Please stay with me, Joe.”

And Joe smiled. He opened his mouth to tell him that of course he would stay with him, that there was nowhere else he would rather be, but then he was coughing and choking on blood. He shivered, suddenly cold, eerily cold, from the inside out. Le Chiffre’s hands felt like the only heat in the world. He tried to squeeze his fingers against Le Chiffre’s hand, but they were numb. 

“Le Chiffre,” Joe sighed. 

He felt Le Chiffre wrapping him up in his arms, and the warmth of his breath as he sighed against his neck. “Joe.”


	12. Epilogue

When Joe arrived in the ambulance, the news vans were already waiting. They flashed their bulbs at the ghostly pale teacher soaked in blood, everyone struggling for the best shot, the best angle, the best picture of the brave young man who had survived the Rwanda genocide, been held hostage by ruthless terrorists, and shot, possibly fatally. 

What they really wanted was the last image of Joe Connor alive. After his stretcher was ushered inside, and the reports released revealed that Joe Conner had, miraculously, survived his wounds, everyone wanted to be the first ones to interview him. 

What had happened to the handsome young teacher during his captivity? Where was the man who had held him prisoner? Was it true that his captor was the one who shot him? Or was the second strain of gossip true, that it had been his captor who had saved him, calling the ambulance and waving them down on the street corner, only leaving the teacher’s side when the police sirens began to ring out in the distance?

The whole city of Paris was vibrating with intrigue, but not more so than London. Joe Connor was airlifted there as soon as he was deemed stable enough for transport, and the BBC treated the event like the sodding royal wedding. There was a constant campout of cameras on the hospital lawns. Apparently, this singular person, this attractive, white male, deserved more coverage than the thousands and thousands of deaths, no, murders sweeping across Rwanda. 

No one wanted to see Rachel’s footage of dead African babies in the streets. They wanted to stare at the front of a hospital and hope for glimpses of Joe Connor, the survivor. Joe Connor, the hero. 

But when Joe Connor was well enough to speak, he would permit no interviews, and he would pose for no photos, and he would not shake hands with the Prime Minister, and he would not discuss his time with his captor, nor reveal his name. He said, simply, that he did not know it. 

The only one he would see was his mother, and it was with her that he went home with three weeks after he was shot. He had a nasty scar beneath his left rib, and he ran his palm over it often, trying to feel the hand that had pressed against it before. 

Weeks stretched into months, and Joe seldom left his mother’s house. He let her dote on him, but he never answered her questions. He spent most of his time in his old room, lying on his bed with his eyes closed, trying to remember the sharp angle of cheekbones and perfect lips. 

He had to see a psychiatrist, and he was prescribed medication to ease his anxiety, for Joe was plagued with horrible nightmares, and his panic attacks seemed to strike out of nowhere. Joe, however, did not take the medication often, because sometimes, in the throes of his violent flashbacks, he would see Le Chiffre, smiling at him and handing him a glass of champagne, or pulling him into his lap in the back of the limousine, or whispering his name as he pressed against Joe’s stomach. 

Joe remembered every word with clarity, now that his mind was clear, exactly what Randolph had said in the warehouse. Le Chiffre had sold the guns. Joe had been his hostage. And maybe that was true, but on the nights when Joe couldn’t sleep, dared not sleep, he stared out his open window and could not bring himself to care. 

He was offered other teaching jobs, and he turned them all down, until he received the offer of leading a church choir on a university campus from a man who had been very close friends with Christopher. Joe accepted the job, and on his first day, he walked down the sunlit path to the church, dressed head to toe in black. But he stopped before he reached the entrance, because to his right, floating through an open window, was a familiar melody. 

Joe cocked his head, and then turned slowly to pinpoint the source. He could see an auburn-haired young woman standing near her dormitory window, playing her violin, and for a moment, Joe could not breathe. He closed his eyes and listened to the notes, reaching his ears on the wind. 

Tchaikovsky’s Valse Sentimentale. 

The song that had played for Joe and Le Chiffre in the Paris garden. 

Joe bit his lip and remained frozen on the sidewalk until the song had finished, and then he turned around. 

Joe did not show up for work that day. Or any day after that. 

 

It was a hunch, but it was all he had. He could not look up Le Chiffre in the yellow pages. Joe had next to nothing to go on. But it was something, and he had to try. 

He strode up to the gates, and took a deep breath before pushing them open. His nose was not assaulted by fresh spring blooms, for it was no longer Paris in April, but October, and more leaves covered the ground now than petals. Joe felt them crunching beneath his shoes as he walked down the cobbled path. He held his breath as he came around the twist to the stone bench sitting in the clearing, the weeping willow hanging over it. And as quickly as that, his heart shattered. 

No one was there. 

Joe shook his head, and the hair he had let grow long curled around his jaw. He cursed himself for his silly, romantic notions, and walked to the stone bench. He sat down and held his head in his hands. When the lights came on, and the music from the concert hall across the street began to swell, he did not look up, only listened. 

He knew the song. Rachmaninoff’s something or other. It was sad, and he could only stand to listen for a few minutes before he stood up to leave. 

And then he saw the tall figure approaching him down the cobbled path. The day was late, and so was the season, and so the sky was dark. Only Joe’s little circle of light existed, and until the man stepped from the shadows into the golden light, Joe could not see him, and dared not guess who it might be. 

Joe’s breath was rapid all the same. And when the figure reached the place between darkness and light, he held his breath. 

And then there was Le Chiffre, standing in front of him. 

“Mr. Connor,” he said, and Joe could not move, and he could not speak. He was frozen in time as Le Chiffre took a tentative step toward him. His suit was sleek and black, and his hair was slick and smooth, and he was even more beautiful than Joe had remembered him in his dreams, in his thoughts, all day every day for the past six months. 

When Joe did not move away, Le Chiffre took another step closer. “I know what Randolph told you, because my employers reported it to me.” His eyes reflected the warmth of the lights, and his chin was lowered, his gaze lifted to Joe, almost submissively. “You were my hostage. Technically,” he said, raising his hand in front of him as Joe flinched slightly. He took another step toward the teacher who was no longer a teacher. “The poker games I was involved in,” Le Chiffre continued slowly, softly, “my sole purpose in Paris, was to earn the money to pay off your ransom myself.” Another step. “When Randolph recognized you at the club, my plans were,” he arched one of his eyebrows, “thwarted.”

All Joe could do was breathe, and even that was asking an awful lot at present. But when Le Chiffre took one more step forward, so did Joe, and they were standing, almost toe to toe. 

“I followed your recovery on the news,” Le Chiffre said, speaking quickly as if he were desperate to fill the space between them. “I remained in Paris, because I knew it was the only place you would know to look for me.” Le Chiffre’s voice sounded strained, and Joe’s eyes flitted down to his pockets, where he knew Le Chiffre was fingering his inhaler. “I have come here every day, Mr. Conner,” Le Chiffre said, and his gaze lowered from Joe’s, as if he could not stand to look at him directly. “Every day I wait for you.”

“And here I am,” Joe finally answered. He reached out his hand and touched Le Chiffre softly beneath his chin, demanding his eyes once more. “You supplied the weapons for the genocide,” Joe said sullenly. 

Le Chiffre nodded. “I did,” he said. 

Joe’s hands smoothed over the angles that had been so present in his imagination, and in his heart. He knew he should care, and a piece of him did. Truly. But a greater piece, the piece that tugged him forward, the piece that held Le Chiffre’s face in his hand, that piece had no room for caring about it. 

He closed the space between them and rested his forehead against Le Chiffre’s, and for a moment, all they did was breathe in each other’s air. And then Joe tilted his head and pressed his lips to Le Chiffre’s. The kiss was soft as it began, but when Le Chiffre’s arms wrapped around Joe and pulled him tight against him, their urgency grew. Lips parted, tongues demanded, and before long, Le Chiffre was dragging Joe down the garden path. 

They would go to Le Chiffre’s hotel room and make up for the six months they had lost, and Joe would slowly forget all the reasons why he should hate the man in his arms. Any decent person, surely, would have hated Le Chiffre. 

But, Joe thought as he pulled the banker in for a rough kiss beneath the streetlamp, we’re all just selfish pieces of work in the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so our journey ends for now. Thank you, thank you, thank you, everyone who joined me in my Le Chiffre/Joe indulgence fic. I may return to them in time, because I love the idea of corrupted little Joe in fancy suits trying to help Le Chiffre be the best bad guy he can be, but for now, let's let them have some quality getting it on time in their hotel room. xoxox


End file.
